


(until) next time

by soften



Series: you're gonna carry that weight [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Blood, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-12 21:04:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7949137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soften/pseuds/soften
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>cowboy bebop/space hunter au. </p><p>space is complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(until) next time

“i do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,  
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.  
i love you as certain dark things are to be loved,  
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”  
_pablo neruda._

 

 

 

 

The Earth is slowly breaking apart.

Baekhyun rings in the new year by collecting his bounty.

He’s thumbing through multicolored notes, fanning in and out as he counts. There’s enough for the champagne Sehun likes to drink on the way back to Callisto. 

His flyer, _CatEye_ , is hanging by the others, a compact thing: lithe with sharp edges and slick lines. Kyungsoo designed it with him in mind. Glasses reflecting the light from the computer he stole before the departure. 

He spoke to Baekhyun about the design years ago. 

There’s a ringing from Baekhyun’s pocket. Fishing for his phone, he slides his thumb to prompt the call to answer.

“Yeah?” he asks, already knowing who is on the other side.

Junmyeon’s personality can arise from his voice alone. 

“Baekhyunnie, where have you been? You were supposed to be back already.”

“I know,” Baekhyun says, sucking a breath through his teeth. “It took a while for them to clear everything up.”

Before Earth crumbled, Junmyeon used to dedicate his time going to temples. The Kim family raised their children to hold a hand instead of striking.

Baekhyun, on the other hand, has never learned either or. His father and mother used to tell him to stay away from a fire, for it’ll burn. It only made his fascination grow. 

“Ah, Baekhyun, get home soon, okay?”

Baekhyun hums back, already setting _CatEye_ into gear. Metal rattles underneath his feet. 

“Okay?” Junmyeon says, again.

“Okay,” Baekhyun answers. 

Fire and blood are two different things, Baekhyun knows. It’s different when a flame licks up a wall, burning the existence of anything it touches in its wake. He wishes the Earth had gone down in flames, where he could watch it crumble into ash, a floating formless orb that would be written in history books as something extravagant.

Baekhyun wonders about the other galaxies, as he sets his flyer onto autopilot, feet folded up on the dashboard. Time has no concept anymore, not with science as advanced as it is now, where years to get from one planet to the next has depleted to mere hours. 

He slips his phone out, letting the screen awaken to hazy white light. 

*

When Baekhyun was fourteen, the Earth decided enough was enough.

Buildings fell as if the Heavens were pressing them to the ground. 

He could remember the rosaries hanging from hands of mothers begging for their children’s lives to be saved. There had been so much desperation - even from his own family, hoping to be able to get anywhere that wasn’t here. 

It’s so clear to him, as if it had happened a week before, a month before, a year before. 

Celebrating ten years of killing for survival isn’t the smart way to do things, but he’s never been the smartest.

Defecting from the Korea sanction on Europa made sense at the time, when he was seventeen and angry at the world. When his knuckles had glass embedded in the soft, honey colored skin from the rest stop mirrors he punched, hoping to flee from the reflective monster staring back at him. 

Fists connecting to bodies, bodies connecting to the floor. He remembers his first kill, the blood on his hands because he didn’t think things through. When he was that young, he never did.

He remembers the taste of Cola, the _fsst_ when his fingernail caught the tab and cracked it open. He remembers McDonald’s breakfasts when he and his brother were able to get away from the chaos. His brother, already aged at 21, eyes dark and ringed with circles of bruised, tired purple. 

“Baekhyun,” he would say, looking at his younger brother with a sort of intensity that came from the prospect of dying.

Byun Baekbeom would never finish his sentence.

Baekhyun hasn’t seen him in ten years. He wonders, off handedly, if he’s still alive. 

Baekhyun lives knowing there is only himself to look out for, as much as it hurts to live this way. That’s how it was, that’s how it was going to be until his own head is going to be the prize of the game.

*

Junmyeon is waiting for Baekhyun at the base.

It’s a floater, connected to Callisto. No one lives on the face of Callisto, but there are rumors of some who have dug themselves into the core, as if they were looking for the womb. None of them have ever come back.

Callisto is a rest stop, with floaters all over itself, veins of technology protruding from its rocky exterior. People come and go, neighbors pack up and leave. Families split up, go their own ways. Some jump into the atmosphere, floating until their body erupts, all of it going black and white at the same time. 

Junmyeon is standing like a worried mother, arms crossed. He spots the sparkling bag, first, when Baekhyun stops in front of him. Something flashy enough that Sehun and Jongin will be distracted by it later on in the night, cheeks red and laughter loud. 

They don’t discuss the money. They don’t discuss anything at all. 

Junmyeon claps Baekhyun on the back. 

“What? Are you going to tell me I did a good job?” Baekhyun teases, but he doesn’t shove the grip off. Junmyeon’s hand on the back of his neck reminds him of his father, who is nothing but a ghost in the background of so many of his memories. It’s funny what a memory does after time, how so many features can become something different, someone different. 

Their base is small. A defunct Korean space base handed over alongside Kyungsoo, years ago.

Baekhyun used to feel his age, before he took his first kill and got enough money to repair malfunctioning commands and wiring in the ship. He used to feel young, like Jongin and Sehun, who go into everything greedy hands first, wanting to take and take until nothing but crumbs is left. He’s watched them go back and forth through hallways, hands always tangled like vines, their boots kicking up dust up from the ground, hanging in the air.

He sighs. He feels too old. Looking at Junmyeon, he looks as old as Baekhyun feels. “You’re growing old, Junmyeon-hyung,” he says. 

“Am I?” 

His hand is still resting on the back of Baekhyun’s neck. One thing about Junmyeon is that he never rushes when he can savor the time. He spends majority, if not all, of his time on the base. Kyungsoo, too, who killed a total of three times before realizing that red stained the skin around his nails. Minseok and Jongdae are usually out on week long trips, calling in from asteroids and picking up metals and materials that could be pawned off. 

Junmyeon is a constant, a pillar. It makes Baekhyun feel safe as much as it does nostalgic. 

“I can barely tell anymore.”

Before, they’d laugh about it. They do, when they have the time and money to go out, drinking Soju that’s so overpriced Baekhyun curses Earth for dying the way it is. They laugh and mimic voices of the old men who used to sit for hours in their courtyards, slippers worn, arthritic hands curled over finely carved wooden canes. 

Baekhyun’s mother used to comment on the beauty of his hands. He wonders how she’d feel if she knew how many times they were drenched in bleach and blood to survive, how many people died at the hands of her youngest son. Would she be happy? Would she say, _I understand, Baekhyun, please be careful_. 

“But it’s New Years, right? It’s a time to be happy, Junmyeon-hyung.”

Space doesn’t care about respect or honor. It cares about killing things to make room for new things - to make room for nothing but vast dark energy, pulsing like a dying heart in a doctor’s hand. _Look,_ they’d say, _look at how it goes without a vessel. That is what makes us human._

“The kids are happy,” Junmyeon teases, eyebrow quirking as Sehun and Jongin run up together. They take Baekhyun’s bag with spindly fingers together, always together, running off to the kitchen. Baekhyun can hear Jongin’s deep voice yelling, _Kyungsoo, come and drink with us!_

“To be young,” Junmyeon sighs. His hand leaves Baekhyun’s neck, nothing more than a phantom weight at the top of Baekhyun’s spine.

“To be young,” Baekhyun agrees, following the path of Jongin and Sehun’s shrieking laughter.

*

 

Callisto is called a no man’s land for a reason. 

Baekhyun’s drunk on Soju, stomach full of stale bread and kimchi rice. 

He can remember people pickling radishes before the departure, as if it weren’t happening, digging up holes throughout the whole of South Korea. They spoke in hurried, desperate voices about preserving culture. Kimchi hasn’t become as expensive as Soju, but it’s close enough that they stock up whenever they have the funds to. 

Kyungsoo sometimes finds ramen on the black market sites. It’s one of his only known weaknesses. Jongdae is the one to fly all the way to the Kuiper belt to pick it up from the rest stops that have individual packs of Shin Ramyun, and those shrimp chips that Minseok likes.

So, Baekhyun is fine. He’s good. Minseok and Jongdae are playing cards with him, some mindless game that fell apart fifteen minutes ago. Jongdae has started attempting a haphazard house of cards, grumbling when Kyungsoo flicks it without a second though. Sehun and Jongin are pestering Junmyeon, asking for new year kisses and crowding him against the fridge and pleading. Kyungsoo is eating intently, cheeks flushed red, full of food.

“You’re going to choke,” Jongdae says, reaching for Kyungsoo’s hand to stop him.

Kyungsoo is quick, chopsticks snapping against Jongdae’s index and middle finger. He would’ve made a good killer if he wasn’t too smart for his own good.

Jongdae hisses, waving the pain out of his hand. “You could’ve just said no, Kyungsoo-ah. Jesus.”

Baekhyun gives up on the card game. Standing up, he shakes the sleep from his legs. “Can you believe we made it another year?”

Minseok looks up at him, cheekbones pronounced with his smile. His eyes are so wide, Baekhyun sometimes fears that they’re going to fall out. “Not so bad. It went by fast. Besides, we did a good bounty this year. Hopefully the next will be just as good.”

“I doubt it,” Baekhyun responds. Minseok, Jongdae, and Kyungsoo share a glance. “Bodies are dwindling. How many people can we kill before money runs out?”

“Ah, come on,” Jongdae says, sucking a breath between his teeth. His cheeks are flushed, slurring his speech a bit. “Why do you have to ruin the mood? It’s New Years.”

Baekhyun wants to say, _I can’t help it_ , but he knows better. They’re refugees, trying to build something new over new scars. Baekhyun thinks of the elderly who refused to leave the Earth. He wonders if they’re happy, if they’re fine knowing that no trees will grow from their bodies, that they’re just vibrating energy, trapped under packed dirt. He might be too drunk.

Kyungsoo is Baekhyun’s New Years kiss, a simple dry press of lips.

“Happy New Years!” Jongin yells, champagne spilling on the ground.

*

Two days later, Baekhyun gets his next assignment. 

A man without a name, hiding behind a mask despite the rings on each finger. A run-of-the-mill assignment, someone who did a wrong deed on Earth and has been exploiting the unbalance of space. Baekhyun thumbs through the folder, leaning against Kyungsoo’s desk, hip cocked. 

“Armed robbery on Luna, huh?” Baekhyun asks, looking at the extensive file. The moon had become the first settled colony, but the sanctions became too strict. Too many people and too little supplies. 

The man comes from the American sanction, which Baekhyun quirks an eyebrow at. He mostly deals within his own sanctions, sometimes with the Republic of China’s and Japan’s, but this is new ground. It’s cost effective, too, with more zeroes than Baekhyun has seen for a single head. “He’s been committing crimes for years and no one has thought to catch him?”

Kyungsoo shrugs, looking up at Baekhyun, his glasses are hanging low on his nose. “The American sanction has been run over by criminals since they left. They’re trying to branch out.”

“Promoting diversity even in space, huh?” Baekhyun jokes, earning a shared laugh. “Have you tracked him down?”

Kyungsoo nods. “He was headed for Triton from what was last seen of him. He was trying to get some sabers from the black market there. Last known trace of him, though, was at Phoebe.”

“Phoebe?” Baekhyun mumbles, closing the folder. Phoebe is known for its craters, used to hold quasi flea markets of rare items. He leans away from the desk, heading for the door.

“Good luck, Baekhyun hyung,” Kyungsoo calls out, voice carrying.

*

Baekhyun finds the radio station by what some might call a “divine accident.”

(Later on, he will find out it had been Sehun’s doing. Sehun who kept telling Junmyeon that the duo pools are the right choice for Jongin and him, to listen to the underground stations early enough to know the name of the game. He didn’t care that Baekhyun ordered to stop touching his things, laughing until his eyes folded into thick, curved lines.)

He can tell that it’s an underground station. Majority of the reports on crime sprees, helping out with bounty hunters, giving them leads and information from dead space. 

Baekhyun has never paid attention to the stations, instead taking matters into his own hands. He leaves it on, though, as he clocks in the coordinates Kyungsoo had gave him. It would take nearly a day to get to Phoebe, he needed a voice to pass the time. 

“It seems that Triple X was found on the Kuiper Belt,” the voice rings through the static. 

Jongin, in his unheeding excitement had wanted to go after Triple X. Junmyeon had refused. Triple X was known for his high kill rate. Jongin had complained, fought, asked to prove himself. Baekhyun didn’t even ask to be assigned, as hefty as the sum was, the expectancy of making it out alive was slim, the expectancy of making it out in one piece? Close to nil. 

The voice continues on: “Team Jiyong and Seunghyun were the ones to apprehend him. So far, they are the highest ranked in duo hunters.” 

Baekhyun has heard of pools before. The kind where people joined up and made challenges. It makes the bloodthirst grow a bit more, with reputation on the line. Jiyong and Seunghyun have hovered between first and second for years now, it wasn’t a surprise. 

“It seems that in second is Choi Minho and Kim Kibum. The duo received a sum of nearly 2mil coins for their capture of Swordfish. He was found on Earth, digging up minerals to sell on the market for holistic medicines.”

Despite the subject of report, the voice is soothing. It has a deepness to it, a depth that has Baekhyun relaxing his shoulders a bit, jaw unclenching a millimeter more. Baekhyun sets his flyer on autopilot. The only important part for Baekhyun to do is settle the ship quietly enough on Triton that it doesn’t cause suspicion. 

“In other news, it seems that Mars has been experiencing heavy storms, with evacuation set for temporary hold on Phobos. Sources are saying that they expect a rise in looting.” The voice isn’t rehearsed. It was natural, heavy with unadulterated fascination. “We have sent out some of our underground reporters that have an eye out for those transporting to the Martian moon.”

Maybe Baekhyun has grown lonely over the years. It’s been so long since Yixing, when they had traipsed between China’s bounty orders and Baekhyun’s own. He settles into the voice, focusing on the sound. His head lolls back, sleep heavy on his bones.

The broadcast continues for a half an hour more before Baekhyun hears: “And this is Park Chanyeol, daume bayo.”

Despite his better judgement, Baekhyun keeps _Park Chanyeol close to him_ , tucked away somewhere that went gone dark long ago.

*

Criminals without a name are simply known in the bounty circles as “Rogue.” 

Baekhyun finds Rogue 1881 in the flea markets of Phoebe. 

Baekhyun is sleep deprived, eyes watering as he covers his face from the wind. He doesn’t have a nickname for himself, not like Yifan who had _Galaxy_ or Jongin who has _Kai_. Baekhyun is simply known as _Baekhyun_ , just like any rogue is known as _Rogue_. 

When he sees the man, wearing nothing more than a unraveling tank top, the material stained from sweat, with miscellaneous prison tattoos all over, he can tell that Rogue 1881 has committed only petty crimes because he doesn’t know a life besides that. 

Morality doesn’t exist in space. 

People did what they could and the governments tried to create order in a force that could consume them, need be. 

It’s simple enough Rogue 1881, drunk on alcohol that a man like him would never get fairly. His rings glitter in the light, made from what Baekhyun assumes, when catching a glance, are fake gems. With his mask off, Rogue 1881 has a missing canine and a sliver of gold hanging from his neck. 

Baekhyun is able to sweet talk him to go into one of the private back rooms and play cards. He spends his time shuffling the cards, bangs falling into his eyes.

“Why do you have that lip chain, huh?” Rogue 1881 asks. 

Baekhyun shrugs. “Felt like having it.”

Rogue 1881 smokes thin cigarettes, packed with illegal tobacco. Cigarettes are among the rarities in space. People have been killed for cigarette embezzling. Baekhyun knows because he has killed enough of them to be considered, by some people, an expert.

Rogue 1881 flicks the cigarette away when it’s only a quarter through, paper crunching underneath his heavy boots.

They got through two hands before Baekhyun reaches over for the alcohol. It’s not Soju, but a heavy bottle of Whiskey, the liquid the color of ember. 

“Didn’t take you for the hard liquor type.” He speaks to Baekhyun as if they are friends. Baekhyun knows, if they lived back on Earth, that they’d never cross paths. 

“People can be surprising” he responds, reaching over for the bottle. Swiftly, he breaks the bottom open, shattering the glass against the table. There’s ember everywhere, sloshing against Baekhyun’s pants, charging forward. 

There’s a few minutes of chaos, between Baekhyun kicking the chair back, knocking into the flimsy table to keep Rogue 1881 down. He isn’t a small man by any means, a small man couldn’t have enough skin for an obnoxiously crooked cross like this Rogue has. His stomach is a hard bulge, a porkish pot belly that seems bloated from muscle. 

Rogue 1881 looks at the edge of the broken bottle, eyes widening as Baekhyun’s boot presses to his chest, keeping him there.

“I have a family,” he begs. Suddenly, he looks as if he’s a child. He didn’t mean to steal the cookie, to touch his hand to the flame. He would make up for his mistakes, he would never do it again.

Baekhyun smiles, eyes narrowing.

“Too late.”

*

Blood is the color of rust. Baekhyun is so used to it, finding it stained onto random parts of his skin, that he forgets it isn’t his own. 

The bar has cleared out. Baekhyun is washing his hands, making sure to get the knuckles and fingernails. There’s soap everywhere he goes, just like there’s Cola, just like there isn’t McDonald’s.

He looks at himself in the mirror. His face is narrowing from age, the chain connecting his lip piercing to his ear glinting in the light. He removes it carefully, washing the drying blood from the cheap metal. Diligently, he places it back on, letting the water run.

The bounty is laid out on the floor, Baekhyun’s mark clearly placed into his skin. They all have their signature marks, something that would distinguish fraudulent kills from authentic kills. There were some hunters who, against their better judgement in a manic state or otherwise, killed innocent people to get money. It was a double edged sword, just like everything else. 

The flyer is weighed down when Baekhyun gets the body in. He’s heaving from the weight. Junmyeon has lectured him on being crafty, not to exert too much of his own strength. The underlying context is that money is important, that Baekhyun is their best hunter and can’t be out of commission, not until Jongin and Sehun could get enough kills to rank in the duos pool. 

When he gets back to the base, Baekhyun is carrying a thin card, an almost weightless, transparent rectangle that has the DNA of Rogue 1881. The card carries 30,000 coins, enough for them to get by for a few months if they were frugal enough.

“You’re back,” Jongdae says as a hello. 

Jongdae’s presence surprises Baekhyun. 

“You, too,” he answers. 

Jongdae and Minseok are usually heard than seen. Scavengers are an entity of importance to any bounty ship, going on extended missions to get scrap metal and other items of importance. Jongdae playfully calls them “pilgrimages,” which always earns a kittenish smile from Minseok.

For Jongdae and Minseok it’s easy, being a couple, to go on missions together. They know second hand stores, thrifting mines that double as a black market cash outs. The majority of their new materials are from land masses that Jongdae and Minseok find along the way. They like traveling, and they like being together. It’s nice to see humanity in a place where humans aren’t supposed to exist.

Jongdae sucks a breath between his teeth, a trait that is so uniquely him that Baekhyun stomach coils at the familiarity. “Junmyeon wants everyone close since it’s the new year, you know how he gets.”

Junmyeon was the closest to his family, who he lost in the Korea sanction five years ago. He’s spent hours searching through Kyungsoo’s wasteland of computer networks and radio stations, trying to find a voice of a family member. 

“Ah, he’s feeling nostalgic?” Baekhyun asks. Jongdae simply nods.

It’s one of the reasons why Junmyeon didn’t like to leave the base. That, and he helped with the mechanics of flyers and enjoyed his time with Kyungsoo, who has become used to Junmyeon like a second layer shadow. It’s also nice, considering Junmyeon’s crush on Kyungsoo, which everyone has guessed about except the two of them. 

Baekhyun has only seen Junmyeon leave a handful of times. Teaching Sehun and Jongin to pilot their flyer when they were deemed old enough to start hunting.

He wanted to be a teacher, Junmyeon. He wanted to be able to guide kids to their futures, which was futile now. 

(“Except for the fact that Sehun and Jongin are children,” he would joke, when it was him, Baekhyun, and Kyungsoo, sharing overpriced beer and watching hijacked cable from a neighboring family base on their outdated TV.) 

But it’s different, taking care of people out of the basic instinct of survival rather than simple pleasure.

 

*

  
Chanyeol is nothing more than a phantom as far as Baekhyun is concerned.

There are so many radio stations that have been put on loop, recordings that help give some sort of semblance to what the earth used to have. Sitcoms have laugh tracks from the fifties, so you were hearing the laughter of ghosts. Chanyeol’s voice could be the only thing left of him. 

It’s a bit of a surprise that Baekhyun actually meets him in one of the most conventional ways possible. 

They’re at a bar on Phobos. Not them, together, but two entities in the same place. 

The only reason Baekhyun knows it’s Chanyeol is because he hears the name thrown around loosely, friendly.

His ears perk at the sound.

It’s already March. Jongin has made his first two kills on his own, and Baekhyun can see him changing. He can see himself smiling with that menacing glint he only gets when he dances. Sehun has only killed one person, last week, and his fingernails are still stained with blood.

Baekhyun is leaning against the counter, hands folded neatly. He only drinks on the base. It’s a promise he made to himself as much as he made it Junmyeon. Junmyeon didn’t want to be responsible for reporting a death to the Korean census, with that nagging guilt of one day the Byuns’ hunting Junmyeon down and asking how could he do this to their son.

Baekhyun pushes himself from the bar top, spotting his assignment going into the back room. They always did that, criminals, they always went somewhere that showed off their power with that facade of being untouchable. 

If there is one thing about killing people it’s that it has to be done patiently. Baekhyun has made reckless mistakes of killing too quickly. His fourth bounty had been done in a rush, when he had gone too quickly and too blindly and let his youth get to him. Being sixteen and a bit unhinged came with your home disappearing into nothing more than a memory. 

He’s not paying attention when a figure comes up besides him, looming over.

“You’re not drinking?”

Baekhyun looks over, his lip chain rattling a bit. It’s Chanyeol. He would know it simply by voice alone which makes Baekhyun feel -- he isn’t sure. Emotions are so complicated to him now. They have been for years.

He shakes his head, making sure to keep the back room in the corner of his eye in case any sort of opening came through for him to get to the target. 

“No, I don’t drink.”

Chanyeol hums, and Baekhyun notices the size of his hands. He notes his face and is surprised at the boyish innocence that’s looking back at him. His hair is black, fading to its natural natural wavy brown. Baekhyun wants to touch it. 

It’s an animalistic feeling, the kind that blurs the lines between what makes Baekhyun human and what doesn’t.

Chanyeol is easy in his movements which betrays the voice Baekhyun has become accustom to. He never imagined Chanyeol like this: an attractive man who knew his way around words and has hands that could cover all of Baekhyun’s chest if they were pressed side by side. He doesn’t know where this comes from, why he’s suddenly thinking about Chanyeol’s hands like he doesn’t have a 50,000 coin bounty within his grasp. 

“Not even if I bought it for you?” Chanyeol asks, which is, well.

Well.

Baekhyun looks at him, pupils sliding to the corner of his almond shaped eyes. There’s this stuttering in his thought process which hasn’t happened in a long time. The last time happened around Yixing, who he had wanted to impress when he was nineteen and kept impressing until Yixing left for a different galaxy and never returned, and that’s--

Well, that’s well, too. 

Baekhyun shakes his head, hand wavering in front of his chest. “Sorry, I can’t.”

Chanyeol accepts it with an easy shrug of his shoulders, eyes closing. “Worth a shot,” he says, before smiling. “No pun intended.”

If he were twenty-two, freshly single and freshly vulnerable, he would have a change of heart. 

Instead, he smiles curtly before he sees one of the target’s men leaving the room, calling out for drinks.

There’s nothing more than one man and a stripper that’s straddling the man’s lap. The man is Japanese if going by _Fugu_ is any indication. He’s a thin man, more of a snake than a puffer fish, but Baekhyun knows what can hide in innocent bodies. He keeps his saber tucked to his side, knowing that the folder called for, _limbs intact, face easily recognized_. When Baekhyun brought in Rogue 1881, they had frowned when noting the slash across his face. 

(“But the precision of the knife cut on the throat?” Baekhyun had teased, earning himself a 200 coin bonus.)

The small dagger Baekhyun owns is one he collected after his third kill. It made him crazy with power, with how well it fit when he slipped it into his palm. He would spend hours throwing it against a wooden crate left around the base, until Junmyeon clasped his hand and told him to relax. 

It’s easy enough for Baekhyun to knock the guard out, to usher the stripper out who is screaming for her life, as if they don’t know Fugu is wanted for the attempted murder of a defunct government official. Baekhyun gets his arm around Fugu’s throat, his other hand interlocked in a choke hold, letting the dagger slide out of his sleeve and cut a gash across the man’s neck. 

His mother would _tsk_ about the mess, about how Baekhyun had surgeon hands and should make a cut as neat as possible.

Instead, he cuts in his mark, a haphazard compass that bleeds through Fugu’s shirt. 

Chanyeol catches his eye on the way out, an eyebrow quirked in interest at the mess Baekhyun leaves. 

*

There are seven bounty offices throughout the Milky Way, resting between the planets, except for Mercury and Venus, which are still left uninhabitable. 

They’re small, compact and dingy. Baekhyun is used to it. Most things that aren’t on Luna have become rundown, full of hand-me-down supplies, held together by sheer will. 

Baekhyun is well acquainted with the Saturn and Jupiter bounty offices. They’re on his way back to the base and most of his business circulates around the two planets. Martian bounties have increased due to the overrun of Luna and the dripping excess has been finding itself on Mars and its moons. 

Jinwoo works at the Saturn office, a pretty boy with heart shaped lips and wide eyes. His hands are constantly covered by gloves. Baekhyun has seen him wash his hands before and after handling each body, discarding latex gloves with an ease that is borderline selfish. There’s Amber, too, who works in the back, usually dealing with autopsies and keeping bodies until the census can be counted and modified for their death.

“Baekhyun-ssi,” Jinwoo greets, slender fingers tapping against the counter top. They try to keep the office as clean as possible, but the light is going dim and Baekhyun knows there’s a ration on light bulbs since production on Earth has nearly halted. 

“Jinwoo-ssi,” Baekhyun greets. There’s a cart with the body bag, clearly tagged as: Fugu, Jap., 35, 180lbs. The undertakers at the office are constantly changing, this time someone whose face he can’t discern because of the surgical mask over their face. “I’m here for my collection.”

The government funds headhunting and bounty hunting. Underground collections of officials so terrified of not having one planet to keep everyone in check that they thought that a kill all free for all would help. Baekhyun doesn’t care, really, as long as there’s food for Junmyeon and Kyungsoo, he’s fine.

Jinwoo’s slender fingers wave the body in. He helps the undertaker hoist the body up on the table. “If his face isn’t recognizable,” he starts, zipping the bag to reveal Fugu. “You know that we’ll have to deduct sixty percent.”

If he were younger and inexperienced, he would be outraged. Being older now, he knows how this game plays out. They’ve put monetary amounts on everyone in the galaxy. 

“I understand, Jinwoo-ssi. I tried my best.”

They have a friendship, if it could be called that. If someone asked what Jinwoo was to Baekhyun, he’d easily answer, _an acquaintance_ , which could count as something of a friend. Jinwoo is a staple at this office, going on five years with the same soft smile. 

“If there’s one thing that I like about you,” Jinwoo states, gloved fingers pressing against Fugu’s face, holding the mugshot up to compare. “Is that you’re always on time, Baekhyun-ssi.”

It makes him feel like he’s back in school, when he was writing names of the idols he admired onto the desk. He smiles at Jinwoo. “You’re making me blush, Jinwoo-ssi, are you trying to get a cut of my winnings?”

Jinwoo has four to feed at his own base, hovering around Titan. Baekhyun has noticed the picture of them on Jinwoo’s desk, which is also adorned with stickers and clips of cats and butterflies and the like. 

They’re all doing things for other people, some of them dealing with more insidious prospects than the others. 

“Ah,” Jinwoo scoffs, discarding his gloves as he washes his hands. “You’ve done well, Baekhyun-ssi, you’ve earned it all. The census already approved his identification and cleared him off the list.” 

It was always business. Baekhyun could remember talking about Prince of Tennis and manga with his friends, backpacks cutting red marks into their shoulders, complaining about English homework and why ju makes a phlegm sound, and why this and why that and why why why--

But now, it’s just, _hello and how are you and anyone else to kill today?_

There’s no variety. They are all working off a debt, a burden chained around their necks and lugging the load of a corpse. 

“Thanks,” Baekhyun says, nodding when Amber comes from the back room, counting authentic Japanese yen, vibrant colors waving like a fan. 

“See you soon, Baekhyun hyung,” Amber calls out, waving as Jinwoo puts on a fresh pair of gloves. 

*

Baekhyun had lost his virginity when he was seventeen years old.

It was two years before he met Yixing, his first real love. It was an abstract thought back then, as much as it is now, when he’s listening to Chanyeol on the unreliable radio in his reliable flyer. Yixing who had captured Baekhyun like a cobra, right for the Achilles heel. Yixing who, war-worn like him, smiled despite it all.

Baekhyun barely remembers anyone before Yixing. He hadn’t kiss anyone until that night when he lost his virginity, when he was falling too deep into too many open bodies. When he was like Sehun and Jongin, reckless and thriving on the idea of killing someone. He hadn’t seen his family in three years and wondered what they’d think, with Baekhyun and his nimble fingers wrapping around a neck, suffocating. Or nimble hands wrapping around a cock, giving pleasure.

Did it even matter anymore? 

Yixing has been gone for three years now. 

Yixing has gone with nothing more than a goodbye and a kiss on Baekhyun’s collarbone, which was so ironic considering his distaste for anything that constricted his breathing. Baekhyun knew Yixing’s greatest fear was choking, someone grabbing his neck and squeezing so hard he could hear his heartbeat implode in on itself.

Baekhyun’s hands had shook when he gripped Yixing’s shirt, while Junmyeon and Kyungsoo watched from the base. They turned their backs when Baekhyun fell to his knees and wanted to yell, _Why are you doing this to me? Haven’t I been through enough? _As if he were the only one who lost it all when the Earth died.__

__Yixing didn’t break his heart, and it has taken too long time for Baekhyun to make peace with that. He had gotten too close, he touched the flame and the flame burned back. His crying and his heart didn’t bring Yixing back, or make him stay. The Republic of China wanted to make its way to the Andromeda galaxy. That took him away. As if the country still existed, as if allegiance in anything made any sort of sense when they all fell apart in the confines of a black void._ _

__Yixing was lost._ _

__Yixing, who watched his members leave one by one. With Wu Fan first, plunging off the edge of their base and letting his body swim through the darkness until it unraveled. Zitao, with his tired eyes and his grimace that was shielding a scared kid, who was too young to fight went back home because he was lucky enough to find his family. Or Luhan who simply wanted to be left alone, who wanted to wander the universe until he couldn’t anymore._ _

__“You have a family, still,” Yixing said to Baekhyun. Yixing had the hollowed ghost of his base, but Baekhyun took him in. Junmyeon grew fond of Yixing, who helped cook with Kyungsoo and tripped over the crates of contraband food that was sold on the side to get some extra money._ _

__Baekhyun, mindless, searched those websites like Junmyeon did. He searches for anything, trying to find in the deepest corners of that ghost web for something to let himself know Yixing is alive, that he’s okay, that he’s still thinking of him. There are clues, reports from the Andromeda galaxy about colonizations; about how it took nearly a year to reach with the highest level of science they had. He could only imagine Yixing living somewhere, finding a new family, finding a place in this universe that Baekhyun couldn’t._ _

__He hated it, him, all of it._ _

____

*

__Baekhyun rarely sleeps on the base._ _

__He’s usually jumping from planet to planet, weaving in between the dark storms and magnetic fields. He sometimes spends a few hours sleeping when the plane is on autopilot. He’s learned to sleep very, very lightly. At times, he thinks he can see everything clearly beyond his eyelids and wonders if his body ever sleeps anymore. He’s fooled his body in so many ways, he’s not surprised he can live his life on three hours of sleep a day._ _

__His room is next to Junmyeon’s whose room is full of photos of his family from the Lunar New Year, he has streamers from when Minseok and Jongdae flew down to Earth a year and a half ago. Memories are hard for Junmyeon to let go of._ _

__Junmyeon is reading an underground magazine, _Dark Matter_ , that reports on government officials, on things that help keep their business afloat. He has his glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, pages curled under the magazine. He’s reading with one hand, which means he’s distracted and waiting for Baekhyun._ _

__“No business today?” Baekhyun asks, stepping inside. He doesn’t have his boots on. Junmyeon finds it disrespectful to step into someone’s room with their shoes on. Baekhyun’s in his socks, picked up from a rest stop between Luna and Phobos. They’re worn thin. He doesn’t have many pairs of socks._ _

__“No,” Junmyeon answers simply, unmoving._ _

__It’s unusual for Junmyeon to divert attention from someone as close to him as Baekhyun, who was the first to find Junmyeon. It has been so many years since then that Baekhyun forgets that they have a beginning that didn’t start with the inception of the universe itself._ _

__He presses his knuckles into the bed as he sits down. Baekhyun doesn’t ask permission from Junmyeon anymore. Junmyeon and Baekhyun both know that the answer is always yes._ _

__“What’s wrong, Junmyeon?” His own face is bare, chain connecting his earring to his lip resting on his stale, stiff bed that he can’t find a comfortable spot in. “You’re never like this.”_ _

__“Sehun said that there’s a radio station you listen to.”_ _

__Ah._ _

___Okay _, Baekhyun thinks. He doesn’t say anything. When he was younger, he would’ve bitten his lips and asked to switch the subject because big issues swelled up in his chest and closed in on him like crumbling walls. He would tug on Junmyeon’s hand and they would kiss until their lips were swollen because it was just them, two scared stricken teenagers against a whole universe.__ _ _

____Now, he’s older. Junmyeon, too. Junmyeon has been older a longer time than any of them._ _ _ _

____“Baekhyun?” Junmyeon asks, and Baekhyun doesn’t realize he’s sitting up and so close to him. He smells of soap, and Baekhyun feels his eyelids droop at the comfort. It’s one of the smells he carries with him across galaxies, along with his mother’s _seolleongtang_ that would linger in the house for days because of the bones sitting in the pot for hours and hours. He can remember the warmth of his father’s hands, but not the shape of his face. _ _ _ _

____Junmyeon is so close and Baekhyun feels like he’s a frazzled wire. He wonders what Junmyeon saw in him five years ago when he wanted Baekhyun to make a home with him, to start a normal life with him in such an abnormal world._ _ _ _

____“Sorry,” Baekhyun says, and he remembers why he hates being on the base with nothing to do. His teeth scrape along the metal ring and he feels bare. He hasn’t been this close to Junmyeon in what feels like months, and it’s different. It’s different because they’re not in love with that reckless passion anymore, but Baekhyun can’t imagine dying without Junmyeon being the one to hold his hand and say that it would be okay. “I hate being alone with my thoughts.”_ _ _ _

____There’s this thing Junmyeon’s face does when he tries to hide a smile, and it’s so -- ugly. It’s ugly in the way that Baekhyun feels his insides go warm over, that Junmyeon still has the humanity to break out of his stern exterior._ _ _ _

____“I know,” Junmyeon replies, and he does know. He rescued Baekhyun from jumping off a never ending cliff into a never ending abyss. Where it was like the ocean he was too afraid to swim into: too dark, too deep, too unknown. “I know how you are, Baekhyunnie.”_ _ _ _

____Junmyeon believes in multiple lives. He believes in a never ending cycle, he believes in so many things that Baekhyun doesn’t understand how he’s still alive._ _ _ _

____“What about the radio station?”_ _ _ _

____Startled out of his thoughts, Junmyeon levels a gaze at Baekhyun. It could be withering, but Baekhyun knows Junmyeon._ _ _ _

____“It’s not good to go looking for ghosts,” Junmyeon continues. Baekhyun’s ribs feeling like they’re being bent into shapes he doesn’t know the names of._ _ _ _

____His fingers dig into the sheets, nails biting into the well worn foam of the mattress. “You would know, wouldn’t you?”_ _ _ _

____The statement is not meant to be biting. It’s a fact. Baekhyun has seen Junmyeon look through the Korean census to find his family. He’s seen him hunt for ghosts because he believes there will be a next life where the Earth doesn’t die and his family doesn’t disappear._ _ _ _

____“I do.”_ _ _ _

____Junmyeon’s hand finds Baekhyun’s, uncurling it from the bed and smoothing his fingers out until they’re lax in his palm. He always has soft hands, Junmyeon. He smells like generic soap and his hair is fading from the blond, dark roots already showing as each shower wears the dye away._ _ _ _

____Dryly, Baekhyun swallows. “The blond suits you. Does Kyungsoo like it?”_ _ _ _

____Rose blood rushes to Junmyeon’s cheeks, and he checks the doorway to make sure no one is peeking. Sehun and Jongin are always running around, but ever since their enrollment into the business, officially, they’ve taken more time to their shared room than crashing into walls and trying to see how much their bones would take until they break._ _ _ _

____“He commented on it,” Junmyeon says. His pointer finger traces the lines of Baekhyun’s palm. He’s not usually the one to become intimate, not in areas where the walls have ears and eyes, which is fine. So many people hide secrets, hide intimacies and hide tragedies because it helps them sleep better at night. “He said it washes me out.”_ _ _ _

____They share a laugh, breathless. Baekhyun can’t help the way his lips press against Junmyeon’s._ _ _ _

____It’s more of a comfort, if anything else, it’s more of a revisit to a part of Baekhyun that hasn’t been able to stretch out and exist in such a long time._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon’s hand wraps around Baekhyun’s forearm, thumb swiping back and forth against Baekhyun’s pulse as their mouths open. And they know better than to do this, than to fall into old, destructive habits. It’s not just the two of them anymore, now there’s so many people and so many orbits that depend on the two of them, Baekhyun with his retrograde frantic orbit, and Junmyeon with his steady heartbeat, consistent reliability._ _ _ _

____Pulling away, Baekhyun rests his forehead against Junmyeon’s chest._ _ _ _

____“How can you do this to yourself?” he asks, and his eyes are closed and his mouth is dry. He wants nothing more than to be able to buy a 12 pack of coke, like his brother and him used to at the 24 hour mart near their apartment complex. “Be alone, in this base.”_ _ _ _

____There’s silence for a long time. All Baekhyun hears is the ocean rush of blood in his ears._ _ _ _

____“It’s just where I belong,” Junmyeon says, the air thick. “Now isn’t the time to rehash old battles, Baekhyunnie.”_ _ _ _

____He knows that. He knows better than play the immature brat he used to be. He’s twenty four and he feels like he’s at the end of the line._ _ _ _

____“I know,” Baekhyun replies, picking his head up, looking at Junmyeon. Their noses are ghosting against each other. Everything's so blurry up close, every feature fading to nothing but a dizzy, blurry line._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon breaks them apart. He’s always the first to come back to his senses, to slip back into that role of _leader, teacher, father_. He sighs, elbows resting on his athletic thighs and closes his eyes._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun knows when to leave. Getting up, he slips out of the room, as if he never entered it in the first place._ _ _ _

________

*

  
(“It seems that Choi Minho and Kim Kibum have slipped from first place,” Chanyeol says, his voice covering the quiet, dead space of Baekhyun’s flyer.

____Maybe it’s easier this way, Baekhyun tries to tell himself, to have that voice be loud enough that it could be right next to him, warm and alive._ _ _ _

____He turns the radio off after that.)_ _ _ _

________

*

____Baekhyun has had a handful of bad kills._ _ _ _

____The first and fourth are the immediate ones that stick out to him, mainly for the way he butchered their bodies. Sometimes — sometimes he forgets his humanity. It’s hard to remain a human out here, he figures out, when he’s twenty-one and ripping skin off the man he was instructed to kill who happened to be an old gym teacher at school._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon had curbed Baekhyun’s activity for almost half a year after that._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun obeyed the orders, reluctantly like a child. He took roaming the halls, one huge circle as he watched their base hover and orbit around Jupiter. His legs were too restless. He watched the storms, gazing at that endless red abyss and wondered how many people dove into that hole with the expectation to come out of the other side._ _ _ _

____There’s never a moment to be reckless._ _ _ _

____Back then, it was easy, _too_ easy. _ _ _ _

____There was just Junmyeon and him and the cold, dead ground of the moon that they lived on. There were more udon noodles to eat, less reliance on sodium packed food. There was Baekhyun with his bare face, when the rogues would say he looks too young, but their last image is of a broken, young boy slashing at their neck with nothing more than hatred in his eyes._ _ _ _

____Hatred is one of the only things Baekhyun refuses to let go of. It curls around his fingers along with his rings, it settles heavy in his chest. There are no broken shards of glass in his hands, nothing to scar already torn skin. He wakes up each day with that burning settling in his chest, when he carries a gun, or a saber or his dagger, when he looks at each kill as the reason why Junmyeon lost his family, why Kyungsoo can’t sleep, why Baekhyun is trying to find if there’s still humanity in himself._ _ _ _

____The rocks crush underneath his boots, each step loud enough to echo through the quiet, deserted alleyways. His neck is warm, the material constricting. A feeling bubbles in his stomach that says something won’t go right._ _ _ _

____And it doesn’t._ _ _ _

____Rogue 245 of the Europa sector gets a knife in Baekhyun’s arm._ _ _ _

____There’s a flash of pure black, as if he jumped off the edge of the world and imploded, and then there’s the high shriek of red-hot pain that his brain registers. In a fit of anger, Baekhyun kicks his boot into the man’s face, pressing down and kicking until there’s nothing left but a mess of rock and bone and blood on the ground._ _ _ _

____He isn’t able to collect the bounty. There’s nothing to this man, not even the 10,000 coin they were asking for him. As if he were twenty again, Baekhyun spits on the ground, grappling his arm where the cut is gashed open. He’ll need stitches, but--_ _ _ _

____He’s scared._ _ _ _

____Jongin and Sehun won’t be able to eat. A hard lump forms in his throat, the sharp swing of his chains the only thing he hears as he leaves the scene. Kyungsoo won’t be able to eat Shin Ramyun, Junmyeon won’t even be able to collect the newspaper he reads anymore, and and and--_ _ _ _

____It’s all his fault._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun is shirtless in his flyer, sweat matting his hair to his forehead. There’s rock and ash underneath his fingernails. His undershirt is ripped in a jagged line at the bottom, Baekhyun’s teeth clenched on one edge as he ties the tourniquet below the gash of his arm._ _ _ _

____Before Baekhyun can leave, he reaches for the lighter tucked in his jeans. It’s a small, silver zippo, one that’s etched with _NO MERCY, NO FORGIVENESS_ on the smooth, silver face. _ _ _ _

____His jacket is on, blood seeping through the sleeve. His body hasn’t seen light since he before he can remember, since Yixing, probably. There’s nothing composed about Baekhyun as he walks to the body, laid out, the knife tossed on the ground next to the lax body._ _ _ _

____“Sorry,” Baekhyun says, kneeling down and letting the flame catch Rogue 245’s shirt._ _ _ _

________

*

____The base is full of voices when Baekhyun lands inside the main garage._ _ _ _

____Usually, he lands on the outside deck, a small metal awning that Kyungsoo built for stop-and-go flights. He can barely land the ship cleanly, his arm throbbing. He feels like he’s going to vomit._ _ _ _

____Scrambling, Baekhyun wonders how he’s going to explain himself. He can feel his veins throbbing, imagining that they’re pulsating blue underneath the soft skin. Fuck, fuck, fuck. It hurts so much and Baekhyun hasn’t been this stupid or lazy since before Sehun and Jongin came, when Yixing left and all Baekhyun wanted do was burn every body until there was only ash and Yixing could come back and--_ _ _ _

____“Hyung?”_ _ _ _

____Jongin is standing there. Jongin with his shocking white hair, his cranberry red lips, his eyes wide looking at the blood seeping through Baekhyun’s fingers._ _ _ _

____A flight or fight reaction, Baekhyun is quick to flee. He’s near the bathroom, almost getting the door closed before Jongin jams his foot in the frame._ _ _ _

____“Jongin,” Baekhyun bites. “Leave.”_ _ _ _

____Jongin meets his eye and he looks so much older than he did on New Year’s._ _ _ _

____It only lasts a few seconds. Jongin’s foot doesn’t move and Baekhyun’s hand aches from holding the tourniquet. Fine, Baekhyun thinks. He lets him in._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun has to look at Jongin, which is disarming. Jongin is only two years younger, but his hands are clever and steady as they untie the stained tourniquet, dropping the thin rag into the sink. Bending a bit, he’s surveying the cut, making sure to keep his hands out of the wound._ _ _ _

____How does he know this?_ _ _ _

____“My sister wanted to be a nurse,” Jongin mumbles, looking up at Baekhyun. “I used to watch her before she had her practicals.”_ _ _ _

____His heart feels ugly, the way it does when sees Junmyeon looking through old family albums, the way it did when he kicked that man’s face in until it was nothing but a stain on the cold, dead ground._ _ _ _

____“Okay,” Baekhyun says, closing his head and shaking his head slightly. “Sorry. I mean, she wanted to become a nurse?”_ _ _ _

____Jongin and Sehun are both mysteries to Baekhyun. Kyungsoo and Junmyeon had brought them back to the base and they had been small, then. They had been clumsy and full of life, like puppies who didn’t know what it meant to feel pain, to feel anything._ _ _ _

____Looking at Jongin now, Baekhyun realizes maybe he’s been wrong._ _ _ _

____Jongin laughs, light. His fingers are long, but not slim. They’re standing close, tips of their feet brushing. Jongin is wearing the slippers Junmyeon insists on. His breath smells like mint toothpaste._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun can’t stop himself before he asks, “Where is your sister now?”_ _ _ _

____Jongin’s hands stutter. A small tremor that only someone like Baekhyun can pick up._ _ _ _

____His voice is closed off, eyes refusing to catch Baekhyun’s. “On Luna. They need doctors and nurses there. My other sister died.”_ _ _ _

____There’s no time to console, no time to sit down with Jongin before he’s looking up at Baekhyun, his pupils so black that he forgets everything for a brief second. “I need to get the medkit that Kyungsoo keeps, hyung. Stay here.”_ _ _ _

_____Don’t,_ Baekhyun thinks. His arm is pulsing. He read about phantom limbs once, how people can feel a sensation in the space of where the limb used to. Would he feel that, waking up with this need to kill, only to realize his arm is missing and he can’t? _ _ _ _

____Jongin slips out of the bathroom, catlike, without so much as the soft _shh_ when his shirt presses against the door as he leaves. Baekhyun has heard about this, from Junmyeon, how Jongin becomes _Kai_ , another entity altogether._ _ _ _

____(“You’d never guess,” Junmyeon told Baekhyun, his voice disrupted by static through the phone. “That it was his first time killing someone.”_ _ _ _

_____It was terrifying_ , Junmyeon wanted to say, but couldn’t.)_ _ _ _

____There are medkits all over the base, some empty and some only half-full. Kyungsoo, anal retentive as he is, insists on medkits._ _ _ _

____Jongin comes back with the medkit and Kyungsoo, which is. Great._ _ _ _

____“What the fuck?” Baekhyun bites out, molars pressed together so hard that a headache is nagging at the base of his head. “Jongin, I swear--”_ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo looks at him, stern with with his eyebrows pressed in a thick, straight line. He doesn’t look like he’s in the mood to play games, which is normal. Kyungsoo hasn’t played games in the last ten years of his life._ _ _ _

____“I came because I know how to give stitches,” Kyungsoo answers, voice flat._ _ _ _

____Jongin looks tied between guilty and tears. He’s so young. He was only 12 when the world had exploded and his life ended, when his sister died in flames. “I’m sorry, hyung. Kyungsoo wouldn’t let me take it without telling him why.”_ _ _ _

____“Brat,” Kyungsoo chides. He works quickly, sitting Baekhyun on the toilet seat, making sure to dab the wet cloth over the cut once Baekhyun has removed the jacket and shirt, both with sizeable holes in the fabric._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun closes his eyes to the sensation of cooling antiseptic._ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo is methodical in everything he does. He sets out the materials on the small sink, as if they have all the time in the world. His glasses are sliding off the bridge of his nose._ _ _ _

____The thread is small, silk. Kyungsoo’s hands are steady, Jongin watching over Kyungsoo’s shoulder as he sets the needle head against the skin of Baekhyun’s arm._ _ _ _

____“It’s going to hurt.”_ _ _ _

________

*

____“You killed the bounty?” Junmyeon asks._ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo and Jongin had told Junmyeon hours after Baekhyun came home._ _ _ _

____(“We’ll distract him,” Kyungsoo said, pressing his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose with the tip of his middle finger._ _ _ _

____“With what?” Jongin asked, eyes slitting as the edge of his lip curled. “You’re gonna kiss Junmyeon-hyung until he forgets?”)_ _ _ _

____The sheets smell stale, as Baekhyun lays down on his bed. His feet are bare, toes stretching out, brushing the wall on the opposite side. He rolls on his side, eye to eye with the slate gray wall._ _ _ _

____“I always kill the bounty.”_ _ _ _

____A sigh. Junmyeon sits on the edge of Baekhyun’s bed as if he’s his father. He’d never be Baekhyun’s father, he can barely remember him. He can barely remember any of his family, what they look like, how they laughed. He only remembers his brother’s grip on his shoulder when they boarded the flyer that would take them away from the Earth._ _ _ _

____“That’s not what I meant.”_ _ _ _

_____I know,_ Baekhyun thinks. His eyes close, his arm throbbing like a healing bruise. There’s an urge to touch it, to rip open the stitches and dig inside. He swallows._ _ _ _

____“Baekhyunnie,” Junmyeon says, voice melting from stern to worried. “You keep running yourself into the ground. You need to take care of yourself, ever since Yixing left--”_ _ _ _

____His shoulders tense up, eyes opening at the name._ _ _ _

____“--you’ve been on this mission to get yourself killed,” he finishes._ _ _ _

____“You know how to pour salt into the wound,” Baekhyun retorts. His voice is ugly, an edge to it. No one mentions Yixing, not by name. They’ve grown so used to the ghost that hangs off Baekhyun’s back, a growth that has collected weight, that refuses to let him go free._ _ _ _

____He can feel the weight shifting, the soft whisper of the sheets as Junmyeon’s legs move across it._ _ _ _

____“The last time you got this hurt was when you let that bounty get a wound in your back, don’t you remember?”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun would rather forget._ _ _ _

____It had been on Ganymede. The bounty was larger than Baekhyun, with a rosary tattooed down his wrist._ _ _ _

____He can still remember the sound of his breathing. He can remember the way the knife had caught along the right side of Baekhyun’s tail bone, dragging. The scar remains, a thick valley of pink, ribbon smooth flesh._ _ _ _

____The wound was a reminder, painful and bleak, like a stain. It was a reminder of Yixing, of that life that fell into the swirling mass of a black hole, where time refused to exist, where no light could escape._ _ _ _

____“I was being selfish,” Baekhyun admits, more to the wall than the either of them. “I can’t say sorry for it because it happened, Junmyeon.”_ _ _ _

____“You know,” Junmyeon starts, resting his hand on Baekhyun’s shoulder. Kyungsoo told Baekhyun to try not to lay on the side of the injury, to turn his right side orientated world into a left side orientated world. “I have to stop you from hunting until the injury is healed.”_ _ _ _

____It’s a punishment. Baekhyun feels hot tears leaking in his throat, closing his eyes to the painful reminder of his childish mistake. “You’re going to let the Terror Twins be responsible for our money, for our food? For everything?” His voice feels like ice, the words digging their nails into his vocal chords, painful._ _ _ _

____“I have to keep you safe,” Junmyeon answers. His voice is even, his hand warm._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun doesn’t fight it. He’s too tired to fight anymore._ _ _ _

________

*

____Baekhyun is twenty-four years old, in Earth days. He doesn’t know how old he is between the stretch of Jupiter and Saturn, or when his feet touch ground on Deimos, but he knows that he’s too old to be doing this._ _ _ _

____Sneaking out of the base usually is a bad idea. Baekhyun doesn’t remember the last time he’s been on the base long enough to even contemplate sneaking out, but here he is, stepping out of his own flyer onto the ground of Deimos, where a quasi club scene has erupted._ _ _ _

____The club scene here is different than the one that is attracted on Luna, where they have beer and drinks, where they can live in the fantasy of an everyday, normal life._ _ _ _

____Deimos, as the name suggests, is the underbelly of Luna._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun’s heart catches the beat of the bass, thumping low under the ground._ _ _ _

____There’s collections of people, all laughing. Deimos is known for it’s underground bootlegging, but it doesn’t stop the party. Whether there is alcohol or not, there’s always music, and Baekhyun needs music more than he needs alcohol._ _ _ _

____He’s close to _The Chamber_ , a club he used to frequent with Yixing when a hand curls around his arm._ _ _ _

____Instinctually, Baekhyun turns around and has his hand wrapped around the arm, ready to strike._ _ _ _

____“Woah,” Chanyeol says. “Sorry, Space Cowboy, didn’t mean to freak you out.”_ _ _ _

_____Shit_ , Baekhyun thinks, looking at the crowds. None of them seem to have noticed, all of them lost in their own worlds. He loosens his hand on Chanyeol’s arm, feeling the prickling heat of blush rising on his cheeks. “Sorry.”_ _ _ _

____Chanyeol just smiles, a straight line of bold, white teeth. Mostly all of them are visible._ _ _ _

____He has big features, Baekhyun notices. His ears, his lips and teeth, his _hands_. _ _ _ _

____His hands are very distracting._ _ _ _

____Instead, Baekhyun says, “Your hair is gray.”_ _ _ _

____Chanyeol looks at him, eyes widening for a second, his hand combing through the newly dyed gray strands. “What color was my hair before?”_ _ _ _

____“Brown, and wavy,” he replies, before he realizes how weird that sounds. “Sorry, I, uh, I’m good at remembering things about people.”_ _ _ _

____“I can tell,” Chanyeol says, laughing from his chest. It sounds so deep and Baekhyun can feel it in his toes, which is a very, very bad thing. “Are you going to stay out here, or are you going inside?”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun schools his features. He knows better than to be soft, than to run around and chase after boys who won’t chase him back. “Inside.”_ _ _ _

____Inside is a cluster of bodies, body heat packed into such a small space that Baekhyun’s neck breaks out into a thin sweat just from standing there. Chanyeol is a head taller than most of the people in the club. He doesn’t leave Baekhyun’s side, following him into the throng of people._ _ _ _

____“You don’t want a drink?” Chanyeol yells, but Baekhyun can barely hear him. He tilts his head, eyebrow raised._ _ _ _

____His heat is unbearable, completely human and alive, as he bends down and speaks into Baekhyun’s ear, “Do you want a drink?”_ _ _ _

____Usually, Baekhyun would refuse. He would insist that being on top of his game was more important than pleasures, but his arm is throbbing. He nods._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun feels too small in a place so big, with bodies all around him. He flexes his fingers, realizing that there’s no one he has to watch out for, that he can just _exist_. _ _ _ _

____It’s been a long time._ _ _ _

____There are bodies pressing against him, bodies with hands that stretch across his chest, that pass along his thighs. He’s nothing here, he’s a body, he’s a pumping heart and blood. His hair is matted to his forehead, and he opens easily when an arm wraps around the front of his chest. His back presses against a toned chest, the neck of a bottle tips towards his lips._ _ _ _

____“Here,” Chanyeol whispers, in the shell of Baekhyun’s ear. His breath tickles the delicate metal of Baekhyun’s hooped piercings, sending a shock to the tip of his fingers._ _ _ _

____His hand tightens around Chanyeol’s forearm, keeping him there._ _ _ _

____It’s not the smartest idea, but he’s never been the smartest._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol is solid. Baekhyun can feel the way his muscles shift and jump as they tighten around Baekhyun’s chest, his thumb dragging across his pronounced clavicle. Baekhyun can barely hear the music, just hears the loud _dadunk, dadunk, dadunk_ of Chanyeol’s heart. _ _ _ _

____He hasn’t felt this way in such a long time, slipping into this foreign space with a nostalgic sort of forgiveness. His hips sway to the music, an automatic, lazy motion that Chanyeol mimics._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun grabs for the bottle, holding it in one hand with lax fingers. The condensation feels good on his hand, slick and cold against the pressing walls of bodies._ _ _ _

____It’s not until the music switches that Chanyeol turns Baekhyun around. Baekhyun only catches the black material of the shirt that spans across Chanyeol’s chest, his hand automatically snaking it’s way up Chanyeol’s stomach, fingers tripping over the divots of lean muscle. His nails sink into Chanyeol’s hair, pressing his forehead into his chest._ _ _ _

____This is exactly what Baekhyun needs. He needs to not think. He needs to be pressed against Chanyeol like it’s the last body he’ll be able to touch this way, with pleasure, with his fingertips burning, with--_ _ _ _

____“Baekhyun.”_ _ _ _

____His eyes catch Chanyeol’s gaze. The club is hazy from smoke, loud with laughter and music. Chanyeol is looking at him, bending down and all Baekhyun can say is: “How do you know my name?”_ _ _ _

____He hears Chanyeol’s laugh more than he sees it, that soft hm, smug and all knowing. Baekhyun’s fingers slip from Chanyeol’s hair, instead splaying out on the expanse of his shoulder blades. There’s so much skin. His palm warms, and all Baekhyun can think of is the muscles underneath, shifting below the soft skin of his hands._ _ _ _

____“I know a lot of things,” Chanyeol says, as if they’re having dinner. As if they’re waiting for the entree. Chanyeol’s breath sends Baekhyun’s nerves into an overdrive. “I remember you from that night, when you looked at me. You know who I am, don’t you?”_ _ _ _

____He’s trying to swallow, his throat dry. Baekhyun nods, but all he can think is, _just kiss me_ , to the steady _dadunk, dadunk, dadunk_ of Chanyeol’s heart. _ _ _ _

____Bodies are jostling, the whole club smells like ash. Baekhyun opens his mouth, going for a sip of that awful beer, but Chanyeol catches his chin and Baekhyun gets his tongue, instead._ _ _ _

____If there was one word to describe Chanyeol it would be _warm_. Baekhyun doesn’t shy away. This is the one night that he’s not himself. He’s not the misshapened monster the universe cultivated inside of him. He’s just Byun Baekhyun, pressing against Chanyeol, whose voice has been a quasi anchor in the lonely depths of space._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol is warm all over. His tongue is sure, his hands sliding down, one circling the dip of Baekhyun’s back, pulling him impossibly closer. His other hand, sneaky as it is, grabs his ass. It’s like a lock has broken, Baekhyun’s mouth opens greedily, a gasp rising from the cavity of his chest, high._ _ _ _

____Holy shit, Baekhyun thinks, pulling away to gasp for air._ _ _ _

____“Um,” he starts, eyes widening before closing them and shaking his head. He needs to scramble for some thoughts, despite the fact that his leather pants feel incredibly tight, cock throbbing. “It’s loud, we should--”_ _ _ _

____Chanyeol doesn’t need to be told twice. His head turns, letting go of Baekhyun completely. It’s disarming, how well Chanyeol can read Baekhyun without a simple word._ _ _ _

____The air is cool outside on Deimos, with nothing but the dark canvas of the night looking back at them. Baekhyun barely lets any time pass before he’s grabbing Chanyeol’s hand._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun’s flyer is meant for one person. It’s willowy, like himself. He doesn’t care, though, as Chanyeol and him tumble into the cockpit, a sharp pointed, joint cracking mess of bodies. They’re both laughing, breathless._ _ _ _

____“I feel--”, Chanyeol starts, moving so that Baekhyun is straddling him on the seat, “--fifteen again.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun’s flyer naturally tints, a barricade to the world. His feet are nowhere near the floor, Chanyeol’s legs spread so wide._ _ _ _

____“Okay,” Baekhyun says, because he can barely speak when all he can feel is Chanyeol’s cock pressed against his._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol gently tugs on Baekhyun’s chain, laughing, he’s always laughing. “I like this.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun can barely process anything, settling his head into the crook of Chanyeol’s neck. He doesn’t want to know what Chanyeol likes, he doesn’t want to talk._ _ _ _

____Easing his hand down Baekhyun’s back, Chanyeol’s his fingers conform to the slope of Baekhyun’s arched back before his hand settles on his ass, again._ _ _ _

____“Enough talking,” Baekhyun mumbles, smelling sweat and a mixture of expensive cologne. He knows it’s expensive, he knows because Chanyeol screams _expensive and put together and danger! danger! run away, Byun Baekhyun!_ _ _ _ _

____There’s nothing more than heat in the cockpit. Baekhyun’s eyes rolling as Chanyeol’s teeth catch the ball of his lip ring, tugging just to prove that he can. Their hips are fluid. Baekhyun’s aching for a release. He doesn’t need anything more than this, this one time to let himself reset to who he’s supposed to be before he goes back home._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol’s palm is dry through the fabric, pressing against the hard line of Baekhyun’s erection._ _ _ _

____“Please,” Baekhyun begs against the throbbing vein in Chanyeol’s neck. “Just--,”_ _ _ _

____Chanyeol hands slip behind Baekhyun, settling on the curve of his ass. It’s dirty, it’s quick. Baekhyun hiccuping his gasps into the soft fabric of Chanyeol’s shirt, fingers curling and skittering all over the place. He wants to touch everything, he wants to have everything in his hands._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol has different plans, sitting Baekhyun up straighter. Their eyes lock on one another and Baekhyun feels stripped down. Chanyeol whose hand lays flat over Baekhyun’s pelvis, making sure he can’t bend down and hide himself. Baekhyun, who loses himself in the sensation. It’s a constant changing pleasure and pain._ _ _ _

____“You look pretty,” Chanyeol pants, sitting himself up. Baekhyun understands immediately, or hopes to, as he leans down to kiss Chanyeol. Their mouths barely work at it, panting into each other’s mouths. Baekhyun feels his toes curl, an automatic reaction before he’s gasping,_ _ _ _

____“I’m going to--”_ _ _ _

____Chanyeol nurses Baekhyun through his orgasm, his hand fitting over the ridge line of Baekhyun’s cock trapped in the fabric, pressing the heel of his palm in a bit which makes Baekhyun’s vision flash into nothing but black. Holy shit, he thinks._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun mouths at Chanyeol’s neck when he’s gained his thoughts back, an automatic reaction of, _pleasurepleasurepleasure_ pulsing throughout his body. His hand snakes its way down, curving over the leather of Chanyeol’s pants, running the palm up and down. _ _ _ _

____Chanyeol whose lips catch the edges of Baekhyun’s hair at the top of his head, panting. Chanyeol who comes with a moan that could shake a cave to nothing but rubble, Chanyeol who is marked by Baekhyun._ _ _ _

____Just. _Chanyeol.__ _ _ _

________

*

____Jongin greets Baekhyun with, “Junmyeon is mad.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun isn’t surprised. He doesn’t respond to the information, instead walking into the base. His pants are too tight. He rarely goes out, he rarely has _fun_._ _ _ _

____“Let him be mad,” Baekhyun retorts, leaving Jongin and Sehun at the entrance of the base._ _ _ _

________

*

____When Junmyeon finds out, Baekhyun is grounded for the rest of the month._ _ _ _

____It’s mainly due to his “ambition”, as Kyungsoo reported to him. His ambition which had opened the stitches on his arm, minutely. Not only that, it also deals with the fact that Jongdae and Minseok found enough pieces of metal to reinforce Baekhyun’s flyer for when he entered the ring zones of artificial atmosphere._ _ _ _

____Most of the world learned about the mechanics of space travel as they grew up. Common enough to be taught side to side with multiplication and the history of their country. Space travel was important, impending apocalypse or not._ _ _ _

____There had been protests, online campaigns about the disturbance that humankind would leave in its wake. They asked, _and what about the animals? and what about the trees?_ They asked questions as crops crumbled underneath toxic heat, as animals barked for sanctuary. They were always the first to know when the Earth was to take a cruel hand to its children._ _ _ _

____Pamphlets had been sent through the mail, the ones that would come in vacuum sealed plastic, where his mother would tell their father to just use scissors or a knife instead of his hands to rip it open. Some of the information came in seafoam colored booklets titled, _So You Want To Learn About Space Travel?_ or, _Lunar Exploration and You!_ _ _ _ _

____Majority of the booklets held information about artificial life, about the transporter rings that would help simulate an atmosphere that could foster life. There were remedial sketches by artists that were captioned: _Fig 1. Jane and her mother, Claudia, are enjoying a day out at the park thanks to NOV-A-GATION®!_ with ambiguous figures laughing, trying to sell the idea of a better tomorrow when their present day was a counted down clock._ _ _ _

____Maybe Baekhyun’s family settled down, laughing like Jane and Claudia, with their exaggerated smiles, kicking up the dust._ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo has a shelf of the pamphlets and manuals, red pen and blue pen and even pink ink drawn all over them. There are doodles from Jongin and Sehun in the margins of some of them, things like knights and tic tac toe games, even a game of MASH placed over a ship safety diagram._ _ _ _

____“You know,” Junmyeon says, catching Baekhyun’s attention. “You don’t need to be here watching us.”_ _ _ _

____“I’m not watching you,” Baekhyun retorts, sipping from the banana milk carton that Kyungsoo gave him in lieu of a good morning conversation. “I’m reading.”_ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo laughs, that deep rattling laugh that edged close to being the laughter of a supervillain. His hands are full of miniscule cuts._ _ _ _

____Jongdae and Minseok could barely find refined metal, shaped and smoothed out of its kinks. Most of their findings were of broken pieces that when painted over, looked uniform enough for their reputation as a bounty unit to be in good graces._ _ _ _

____The radio is always on when Junmyeon and Kyungsoo work._ _ _ _

____The garage is one of the rooms that had come along with the base, a gift from the government once Junmyeon registered them for the interstellar hunting base. It was big enough for three flyers, with deep ceilings and a side room to stack books and tools, where Baekhyun was currently._ _ _ _

____Usually, Junmyeon liked listening to classical music, _Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2_ being one of the more consistent sounds heard on the base. Baekhyun had learned how to play the song on piano in his accelerated piano class, held every Thursday when he was 13 years old. _ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo didn’t seem to mind, instead humming along to it when each installation was going smoothly._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun’s feet were up, crossed at the ankle, skimming over the newest edition of: _Conquering Callisto? Don’t Let it Conquer You! VOL. 3_ , when he heard a distinct voice flutter through the radio._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol’s._ _ _ _

____Like a gun had gone off, Baekhyun immediately stands to his feet. It was one of his less desirable traits: his automatic flight reaction. The book, in its hefty glory, falls to the concrete with a plap as he leaves the small room._ _ _ _

____“Why is this station on?” he asks._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon turns slowly. He’s wearing gloves, and a fucking apron, as if he were making dinner for a Sunday night get-together rather than rebuilding Baekhyun’s ship to help go and kill people._ _ _ _

____“Jonginnie and Sehunnie entered the duo’s pool,” Junmyeon answers, but that wasn’t all there was to it._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon wasn’t pure. He saw people die in front of him, in ways _So You Want to Learn About Space Travel?_ left out of its pages, not even hidden in the complicated coding of the index. _ _ _ _

____Family was sacred to him, Baekhyun was sacred to him._ _ _ _

____“You let the Terror Twins go into that?” Baekhyun asks._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon shakes his head. “They asked me, and they’re both of consenting age where they can sign up on their own. They’re ranked fifth after getting the Phobos duo last week, bringing in 80,000 coins for us.”_ _ _ _

____“Are you making me feel bad for not fighting with a partner?”_ _ _ _

____“I’m not making you feel bad about anything,” Junmyeon answers. “You’re making yourself feel bad about something, Baekhyunnie.”_ _ _ _

____Gritting his teeth, Baekhyun says, “ _Don’t call me that._ ” His arm throbs, a reminder to unclench his fists. _ _ _ _

____Junmyeon calls him Baekhyunnie when he wants to get on his nerves, or when he wants to hypothetically smack Baekhyun’s hand with a wooden spoon. “I hate it when you do that.”_ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo hums a bit louder._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon doesn’t take to people questioning his authority well. He is good natured, a professor’s son, but living in the cold heart of space turn people into things they aren’t supposed to be._ _ _ _

____He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he grabs Baekhyun by his unwounded arm, grip firm, but not tight. It describes him perfectly. Baekhyun hates knowing how Junmyeon held people. It makes him feel helpless._ _ _ _

____The door closes with a faint click, Junmyeon wiping his hands clean when he releases his hold on Baekhyun._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun notices the way his arms flex under the tight material of his shirt._ _ _ _

____“I know why you’re doing this,” Baekhyun says. He doesn’t care to keep his voice low, to keep it calm. This wasn’t the milling alleyways of Triton, or the deserted wasteland of Ganymede. Junmyeon was Baekhyun’s--his what? What had they been to each other that could be summed into such a neat word?_ _ _ _

____“Why, Baekhyun?” Junmyeon challenges._ _ _ _

_____He knows what I sound like when I moan_ , Baekhyun thinks. “Whatever you heard about Chanyeol and I--”_ _ _ _

____“I didn’t hear anything.”_ _ _ _

____“You _saw_ ,” Baekhyun taunts. He steps closer, slipping into that facade. “It wasn’t you I ran to when Yixing left, was it?” _ _ _ _

____Junmyeon swallows, skin washed out from the fluorescent lights. “Don’t play games, Baekhyun.”_ _ _ _

____“That’s all we ever do,” Baekhyun whispers into Junmyeon’s ear, closing his eyes. His fingertips skirt over the pulsing muscle of Junmyeon’s arm, hovering, not touching. “All we ever do is play games, but--”_ _ _ _

____“But?”_ _ _ _

____“If you ever play smart with me again,” Baekhyun says, nipping at the shell of Junmyeon’s ear. “I won’t play nice.”_ _ _ _

____A sound so quiet, Junmyeon’s gasp is small. “You’re not smarter than me, Baekhyunnie.”_ _ _ _

____That nickname, again. That nickname that made his scarring arm throb, that made Baekhyun think of his knees hitting concrete when Yixing said goodbye. Was this all who he was going to be? A lost boy scolded by one person only to have the same by the next._ _ _ _

____They all knew Chanyeol was a part of Baekhyun that they couldn’t touch, that they didn’t touch. No matter how long it had been since Sehun left that stupid fucking station on, Baekhyun refused to acknowledge Chanyeol’s voice and how it resonated inside of him, something warm and soft. Something Baekhyun thought he had killed in himself so long ago._ _ _ _

____“If you take that away from me,” Baekhyun threatens, palm squeezing Junmyeon’s forearm, feeling the jumping pulse of blood throughout his body. “I will take Kyungsoo away from you. I won’t hesitate before I give him in for that bounty he’s had on him since he came here, _hyung_.” _ _ _ _

____Junmyeon steps out of the ring of Baekhyun’s arms._ _ _ _

____The radio resumes the soft, wistful sound of _Chopin_. _ _ _ _

________

*

____His legs are always restless. Baekhyun takes to walking around the circular layout of the common area, like he did before. There is no need to watch Jupiter’s angry third eye, all knowing and leering as it is. If he could, he would open the window and plunge himself into it, just to get this over with._ _ _ _

____Why Chanyeol?_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun didn’t want to think of him, of his deep laugh and his large hands that flattered his face in the oddest of ways. The skin hugging his nail bled for a few, fleeting seconds. He tasted the cooper on the tip of his tongue, canines stained from committing the act._ _ _ _

____Their home, as small as it is, could sometimes feel as if it were hollow. Baekhyun can almost hear, above the small TV in the corner, his breathing. Yifan had taught him a breathing technique for when the anxiety became too overwhelming, filling every corner of space._ _ _ _

____Closing his eyes, Baekhyun measures each breath until he counts to ten in his head. _Hana, dul, set, net, dasot_...and let the breath deflate, taking the tension away from him. He can feel his back relaxing, his legs unlocking from their rigid, military straight position. _ _ _ _

____South Korea made their men serve in the military when their country was still land and sea, salt in the air when he went to visit his _halmeoni_ in Yanggu. He had been so young then, eight or nine, when he got to take the train to the sea and put his feet into the cool water for the first time._ _ _ _

____The fish had nibbled at his toes, curious about the intruder in their home. He wondered, was _halmeoni_ happy, in her tiny house in tiny Yanggu? Did they still air the dramas she enjoyed, was she still able to cook _sundubu_ , or had the water turned so sour that she waited, peacefully, for the Earth to flash out like a dying lightbulb?_ _ _ _

____Waiting made him nostalgic. Baekhyun constantly ran from those memories, blurry faces in blurry water that meant nothing to him anymore._ _ _ _

____He thinks, idly, that maybe he could work on his school lessons. Junmyeon, Minseok, and Jongdae are the only ones to have completed their studies, enrolling in the come as you go courses the government offered to its special scavenger and hunting units. Most people didn’t enroll. School and lessons took away from killing, from money, from surviving._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun is still stuck in high school. He enrolled at the insistence of Junmyeon who said something along the lines of a bounty hunter with an education made for better merit. Baekhyun didn’t even know basic geometry, but he knew how to disembowel a man, so he called it even._ _ _ _

____Instead, he took to looking for Sehun and Jongin. They were quieter now. Killing someone by your hand caused people to go a bit softer around the edges, withering at the corners._ _ _ _

____Sehun and Jongin came together as a pairing, which was usually odd. Minseok and Jongdae, married now and roaming the universe, came as individuals. Kyungsoo came as a promise. They were holding hands, Jongin protective of Sehun, who towered over majority of them._ _ _ _

____They did everything together. Twins without the DNA. Baekhyun found them in their room, walls covered with posters they collected and hoarded when they passed through the kuiper belt._ _ _ _

____“Hyung,” Sehun greets. Their bodies are both long, bending like pipe cleaners at the joints. Jongin, sleepy as he usually is, is reading a manga. Manga counted as a rarity, and contraband in certain certified country domains._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun steps into the room. It feels warm, a bit sticky. Jongin and Sehun produced body heat that could power the whole ship if it relied on their closeness for energy._ _ _ _

____“Heard you enrolled in the duo’s pool.”_ _ _ _

____Sehun nods, knocking Jongin’s legs off his lap. Jongin grunts, folds them, and tucks his toes under Sehun’s thigh instead. Baekhyun, when walking in, had noticed the iPod Jongin is listening to._ _ _ _

____He quirks a brow at it. “Where did you even find an IPod?”_ _ _ _

____“They gave it to us as a compensation gift at the Saturn office,” Sehun explains. It’s bulky, the color an obnoxiously neon lime green. “Jinwoo-ssi told us to say hi to you. Hi.”_ _ _ _

____“Hi,” Baekhyun returns, laughter caught in his throat. “They gave it to you instead of money?”_ _ _ _

____Sehun nods. “Not all of it, obviously. We got probably, ninety-five percent of what we needed, but Jinwoo-ssi told us to use the IPod. He said it was a gift more than anything else.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun had received the same type of gifts when he was starting out, too. Heechul had given him a yo-yo when he worked at the Jupiter office. Baekhyun threw it out the trash chute and watched it float into space before popping like a bubble from the pressure._ _ _ _

____“How was it?” Baekhyun asks. He realizes, then, that he’s like Junmyeon to them. Junmyeon kept his attention on all of them as equally as he could. He made sure to call, to report, to ask. Sehun and Jongin were a safe, though. Baekhyun was the only one who seemed to find the first two numbers of the combination, still struggling with the third to open them completely. “Your first kill?”_ _ _ _

____Instead of answering, Sehun yanks the earbuds out of Jongin’s ears. Jongin whose caramel skin turned red at the incident, almost went to lunge before noticing Baekhyun was there. He sat up, immediately, leaning his weight against Sehun’s pointed, slim shoulders._ _ _ _

____“Hyung asked about our first time,” Sehun tells Jongin, who quirks a brow. Rolling his eyes, Sehun elaborates with: “Our first bounty, _baegchi._ ” _ _ _ _

____They tell Baekhyun with voices split between awe and apathy. Sehun acquainted himself with far range fighting, guns, and staking out. Jongin, dancerly and catlike as he is, took to close combat. He was able to stretch his body, to react quickly and use coordination to their benefit._ _ _ _

____They talk about the blood, about the sleek, transparent cards that the bounties blood had been inside of, how that held all the money. They talk about their biology workshops, how Junmyeon promised them to go back down to Earth to dissect frogs. He thought about Jongin’s sister, burning in a fire, hand reaching out and calling for help._ _ _ _

____(“What if we did it together?” Baekhyun asked. His words were jumbled against Yixing’s chest, half asleep slurring from the way fingers combed through his hair. “Don’t you think we could do it?”_ _ _ _

____Yixing, quiet as always, sighed. His chest rising. “Baekhyun-ah,” his voice was soft. “This is enough for now.”)_ _ _ _

____“Will you help us one day, hyung?” Jongin asks, eyes wide._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun stalls. _Help?__ _ _ _

____“Help?”_ _ _ _

____Sehun nods. “Tri groups can handle more bounties, and they get a bigger reward. GOT7 has their hyung line do it.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun is getting too old for this._ _ _ _

____“Okay.”_ _ _ _

________

*

____Ships passing in the night._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun grew hard enough that a simple dry humping session didn’t make him go soft. What did, though, was the fact that Chanyeol had found a way to wire himself to Baekhyun’s flyer a week into his forced sabbatical._ _ _ _

_____CatEye_ is Baekhyun’s home. He knows it--its voice, the way the wings can handle the pressure of space, how to land it. He feels at ease in there than anyplace else, except for the lap of a handsome man. He took to lounging around the flyer, feet balanced on the bulb shaped head of the shift control._ _ _ _

____“Did you hear that Lee Taemin is on the run?” Chanyeol says._ _ _ _

____Phones, in the hunting business, are only used for business. Baekhyun’s phone had three numbers in it: Junmyeon’s, the Saturn bounty office, and his brother’s. One time, in desperation, he called it, only to hear: “ _This number you are calling has been--_ ”_ _ _ _

____“Yeah,” Baekhyun replies. His fingers are woven together, resting on his stomach. He could fall asleep like this, in nothing more than a thin white shirt and the boxer briefs he stole from Kyungsoo’s clean laundry pile. “Heard he tried hunting down other hunters and take their bounty. Isn’t that normal, though?”_ _ _ _

____“Not really,” Chanyeol answers. His voice is pitched higher over the line. “It’s usually a team effort. TVXQ disbanded into two operations because of that.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun that, the controversy put bounties over all their heads, each ranging in the millions._ _ _ _

____“So what now? People are going to hunt down Taemin? That’s not news, that’s everyday life.”_ _ _ _

____“For you.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun’s lip quirks. “Not all of us get to pirate radio waves and have their own bounty hunting station. Does Bounty 24/7 know of you?”_ _ _ _

____“Of course,” Chanyeol answers. “Enough about me and my lavish lifestyle, though, what about you?”_ _ _ _

____“What about me?”_ _ _ _

____Chanyeol hums. Baekhyun can feel the sound more than he can hear it. It’s a low, all encompassing sound. His toes curl subconsciously._ _ _ _

____“What did you want to be when you were older?” Chanyeol asks, his voice wavering over the line._ _ _ _

____“It’s stupid,” Baekhyun says, feet slipping from the shift gear. He wraps his arms around his knees, pressing them against his chest. He feels so young all of a sudden._ _ _ _

____“Why?”_ _ _ _

____“I really can’t remember it.” Everything from seventeen and beyond doesn’t make sense to who Baekhyun is now. “I remember singing, I always liked it, especially humming when going to school, you know? It passed the time.”_ _ _ _

____“Oh yeah?” Chanyeol sounds further away. Baekhyun notices his eyes closing, his arms slipping from the clutch he has around his legs, letting them stretch out._ _ _ _

____“Yeah.”_ _ _ _

____“Are you falling asleep on me, Space Cowboy?” Chanyeol laughs. It sparks the line back to life, as if it received a shock. “You weren’t like this on Deimos.”_ _ _ _

____“No, I wasn’t.” Baekhyun’s bones ache, the way they always do right before he falls asleep. It’s as if everything catches up to him, as if they’re resting a two ton anvil on his chest as a kiss goodnight. “I like falling asleep to your voice.”_ _ _ _

____“Until next time, Space Cowboy,” Chanyeol laughs, humming until Baekhyun drifts off._ _ _ _

________

*

____When Baekhyun dreams, he dreams of floating._ _ _ _

____He’s a child, always. He’s crying, hands scrambling through a mass of black that stops him from seeing the other side. He hears a soft hum, this bright springing light that sprouts forth from his chest. The voice is always high, a soft tinkling bell that Baekhyun has constantly walked his life around with._ _ _ _

____There’s always movement to that mass of black. It’s sentient, and Baekhyun knows it and the formless void knows it, too. He wants to ask it why it keeps coming back, does it mean he’s dying? Does this happen to every single flyer or is he just special, like he seems to always be in shitty situations like these ones._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun’s arm throbs, a sonar of pain that sends spider crack red along the corners of the dream._ _ _ _

____It’s the same thing, over and over. Kyungsoo always said that recurring dreams pointed to a longstanding issue that needed to be sorted out._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun hovers the blackness. He’s small, his hands clumsy, and his toes stretching for any surface to land on. It’s this same dream over and over, and he knows that he’s dreaming. All he can hear is that bright humming, the crack of the pain searing through his arm._ _ _ _

____His hand reaches that black, formless mass. It sinks through, and he wonders, is this a blackhole? Will he ever escape from it, as he dives his body inside. It’s warm, when his body passes through it. It’s always the same, the same trilling voice that calls for him to come back, to wake up._ _ _ _

____But, this is different. Baekhyun’s arms wrapping around himself, ankles crossed. He can feel the voice more than he can hear it, it’s warm. It’s everywhere._ _ _ _

____He wakes up._ _ _ _

________

*

____“What is it about him?” Baekhyun asks, sitting next to Junmyeon in the garage, the both of them watching Kyungsoo tinker with Sehun and Jongin’s flyer. “What is it about him, Junmyeon?”_ _ _ _

____Junmyeon is a man who can keep a collected front until the day he dies. He’s writing down in the collections notebook, keeping track of funds, and what has been stocked up and what’s running low. His handwriting is neat, Baekhyun can remember the commanders at the hunting office commenting on it which had made Junmyeon blush._ _ _ _

____“Keep your voice down,” Junmyeon answers. Baekhyun rolls his eyes, taking a sip from the _Coca Cola_ the two of them are sharing. “We’re not two _ajummas_ at the corner market.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun laughs, the fizzing soda getting stuck in his throat. When he clears his throat, he says, “Kyungsoo can’t hear us over your stupid _Chopin_ music, anyway.”_ _ _ _

____Junmyeon’s careful not to let the side of his hand smear the ink. “There’s no reason, Baekhyun. He’s here and I’m here.”_ _ _ _

____“That’s all it takes for you?”_ _ _ _

____“It was like that with you, wasn’t it?” Junmyeon answers, eyes settling on Baekhyun, letting a beat pass between. His words, harsh, but his eyes are soft. “I’m only kidding.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun takes a loud sip from the _Coca Cola_ , rolling his eyes. “We didn’t date, you geezer. We fucked each other and cried when we thought that Callisto was going to collide with Saturn when we were nineteen.”_ _ _ _

____Junmyeon laughs at the memory, loud enough that it echoes throughout the room. Walking through racks of materials, Kyungsoo appears before the two of them._ _ _ _

____“Why are you cackling like that?” Kyungsoo asks, his mouth set in a thick, plush red line._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon shakes his head, his eyes straying on Kyungsoo for a second too long. “Nothing, Kyungsoo, it was just Baekhyun.”_ _ _ _

____“It’s fine,” Kyungsoo answers. His glasses are folded into the pocket of his shirt, his hands covered in grease. “Can you come with me, hyung?”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun looks over the notebook when Junmyeon follows. He can see materials like napkins, cups, soap and wrenches, bolts. Their whole life compact and fitted into a rectangular planner with a Rilakkuma design on the front. Baekhyun had picked it out when he was buzzed and flying back home._ _ _ _

____He’s sipping from the can when he hears a hurried _crash_. He’s up before he realizes, heart beat quickening. There have been reports, from Chanyeol, of ambushes at bounty hunter camps to kill out the competition._ _ _ _

____He doesn’t find a bounty hunter._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon has Kyungsoo pressed against the table, blueprints laid out and tacked on to prevent from rolling up in the midst of working. Kyungsoo, with his long, angular fingers sunken into Junmyeon’s hair, is lost in the motion. It’s the first time Baekhyun has seen him so _relaxed_._ _ _ _

____He knows better than to watch. He smirks as Kyungsoo gasps, Hyung, please, a statement so submissive to come from the ticking time bomb that’s Do Kyungsoo._ _ _ _

____Their kissing turns frenzied, Junmyeon’s hand pushing up the fading material of Kyungsoo’s shirt, glasses falling out of the small stitched pocket over his chest, a loud clack that makes them stop for a moment. They go back to kissing as if there’s nothing else in the world to do. Baekhyun feels a pang of jealousy. Fucking love birds._ _ _ _

____He leaves when he hears Junmyeon say, “You’re the only thing I want.”_ _ _ _

________

*

____Yixing taught Baekhyun how to shoot a gun._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun used to rely on hand-to-hand combat and his saber, now kept turned off and packed close to his side._ _ _ _

____The weight of the gun had intimidated Baekhyun at first, the cold metal and its defiant shape resting in his palm. Yixing, by then, had lost nearly all of his hunter partners. It was him against the universe, which made him go a bit gun crazy. Baekhyun never fought with him about it. People went a bit crazy in their own ways all the time, who was he to tell his boyfriend to stop hoarding guns?_ _ _ _

____Shooting ranges and classes only took place on government owned land. Outside in no man lands, like Callisto, it was whatever you could find to be made into some makeshift range._ _ _ _

____Orange Mandarin was spacious, a ship built for more members than it carried. Yixing made sure to keep himself at all angles, keep his possessions minimal and locked away, a bit safety lock crazy from years of wear and tear. Being a killer did that to you, made you so afraid of being killed in the same way you offed someone._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun spent the better part of his time on Orange Mandarin when he was with Yixing than on EXO._ _ _ _

____“Hand to hand combat is dangerous,” Yixing said to Baekhyun. They were sitting on the bed, reading a manhua that Zitao had laying around. It’s in Chinese, which Baekhyun can barely read, let alone speak. The Republic of China division had all their hunters learn Japanese and Korean, out of habit. Baekhyun knew Minseok and Jongdae had a firm grasp on Chinese, as well._ _ _ _

____He admired the pictures, instead._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun’s head tilted up, his wrist aching from the support. His cheek was a puffy, angry red from where his knuckles pressed too deep._ _ _ _

____His skin was too sensitive, even to the sun. His mother, when he was with her on Earth, used to shield him away from the sun with an umbrella or brimmed hat._ _ _ _

____“You think everything is dangerous.”_ _ _ _

____Yixing’s lip curled, always on one side, the right. He always had a mysterious half smile, that betrayed the aloof nature of his actions._ _ _ _

____“Everything _is_ dangerous.”_ _ _ _

____“No,” Baekhyun replied. He was looking at the manhua, the obnoxious teary eyes, the Chinese lettering carefully typed out. Could he get carpal tunnel from killing enough people, like artists did after such a long time of doing something they loved? Baekhyun didn’t love this, though, killing people to survive. “Everything _can be_ dangerous, Yixing.”_ _ _ _

____They never sat too close to each other. There was always this thin, invisible layer between them, like a hidden extra lover. Yifan said it was underlying anxiety, or PTSD, or intimacy problems. Yixing said it was just sensitivity, Baekhyun didn’t give a shit what it was. He didn’t care what was wrong, if it was everything, if it was nothing. All he cared about was that Yixing touched him when it mattered and where it mattered. That counted._ _ _ _

____Yixing stood up._ _ _ _

____“I’m going to teach you how to shoot a gun,” he said._ _ _ _

____So, he did._ _ _ _

____Orange Mandarin’s training room was large. Too large. It held too much silence in its belly, where swords and guns alike took residence._ _ _ _

____Hunting guns were different than guns that people were used to. Bullets had been replaced with pellets of poison, shot into the bloodstream where it strikes and stays, nesting until the bounty died. It was easier to waste natural resources than manufacture metal over and over, again and again._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun noticed makeshift dummies, the ones that the Republic of China gave to them to practice on. There were holes everywhere, some large chunks, some tiny pinpricks that eventually made a haphazard design, like a faulty connect-the-dots._ _ _ _

____It had given him a rush, a mixture between hideous and powerful. His hand, steady as it was, couldn’t shoot a perfect ten right from the get go. He clipped the arm, got some stuck into the shin, struck them in the skull, over and over._ _ _ _

____“Are you even trying?” Yixing asked, hands resting on Baekhyun’s hips. “A shot counts.”_ _ _ _

____“No, it doesn’t,” Baekhyun answered, letting the pellet strike into the chest cavity, where it stuck, like an angry spider. “Killing them is what counts.”_ _ _ _

________

*

____Baekhyun has grown used to being the someone who can fill a void._ _ _ _

____He had been seventeen when Junmyeon found him, in a shelter for other kids like him, lost without families who didn’t know where they came from or how they got there. It had been a fuzzy year for Baekhyun, a fuzzy three years, where he learned how to kill with his bare hands._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon, even then, had been clean cut. If it weren’t for the way his eyes glimmered or his cheeks pigmented rose at the slightest mention of something he enjoyed, Baekhyun would’ve taken him as a spy._ _ _ _

____They had come together like binary stars. Baekhyun and Junmyeon, despite never sitting down and meeting, were always around each other. Maybe it had been because they were both Korean, and both knew it, because their English, at the time, lacked. Maybe it had been an invisible attachment in one of the philosophy books Yifan and Junmyeon had talked about when they met._ _ _ _

____He didn’t know._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun, hovering in the Kuiper belt, eating a bag of prawn crackers, waited out for the assignment. Jongin and Sehun were doing enough to help supply a baseline for income, already ranking a low 15, just two months after joining the duos pool._ _ _ _

____Majority of the time, it was Kyungsoo and Junmyeon in the base. Baekhyun wondered how they didn’t have a collective break down. Junmyeon and Kyungsoo were coiled like springs, set to bounce back and forth when a moment too much for them came about. Maybe they were just spending the time being a couple, which made Baekhyun’s stomach tighten._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon had been a desperation he clung to, a mutual knowledge that they would die together. Yixing had been something else entirely, a head on car crash collision. Baekhyun could remember the blood staining one of his kneecaps, pants ripped open from a bad landing. He could remember that because Yixing had sucked him off, afterwards, in one of the rest stops that littered throughout the outer belt of the planets._ _ _ _

____The Universe was dark, an all encompassing mass that no one could comprehend. Creatures from different galaxies began their descent into the Milky Way, coming out in public more often. They were haphazard, misshapen. They were these trial runs that were kept so far away in the darkness, a secret shame no one wanted to come out into the light._ _ _ _

____As the Universe grew louder, longer, and bigger, Baekhyun felt smaller. It had been a common experience, that existential crisis that set in when the silence grew like a thick blanket, covering the eyes and ears until all that came out was a fuzzy, unknowing being of who you were. There was, at least, an easier way to deal with the loneliness of things when you had someone next to you._ _ _ _

____Would it have been different if Baekhyun came to EXO with Yixing by his side? Would it have been different if Baekhyun said, _talk to me_ , when Yixing woke up too many times in too early hours of the night, chest heaving and nape of his neck covered with sweat? _ _ _ _

____Yifan jumped off the Orange Mandarin in an act of defiance. That’s what Zitao said, that’s what Luhan said. Yixing didn’t say anything. Baekhyun didn’t say anything. All he said was that he saw the body pop, like an overinflated balloon. _Pop_ , in the quiet darkness. _Pop_ , and he was gone. Forgotten in an instant. _ _ _ _

____(“Maybe we could’ve done something,” Junmyeon says, laying on his back in Baekhyun’s bed. Baekhyun wrapped around him, clinging like a wounded child._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun who felt angry, who felt betrayed. They were all in this, and one of them decided enough was enough, like the Earth._ _ _ _

____“What is there to do?” Baekhyun asks. “Jump with him?”_ _ _ _

____Junmyeon remained quiet.)_ _ _ _

____Chanyeol’s voice sparks to life._ _ _ _

____“Hello to all of our loyal listeners.” His voice is loud. Too loud sometimes. Like his hands are too big, like his eyes are too bright when the lights hit them. “We have some exciting news for you in regards to Lee Taemin.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun mostly focuses on Chanyeol’s voice. Whatever it was, it made Baekhyun’s hand lessen its grip on the metal of the gear shift. He opens the bounty file on the screen: a scowling face with the name Jessica pops up. A SNSD defect. Interesting._ _ _ _

____Groups had been slowly breaking apart. Maybe it’s the excess of bounties running around, the stench of blood and money making them go a bit stir crazy. People sometimes work better by themselves, Baekhyun knows._ _ _ _

____It still doesn’t lessen the nervous boiling in Baekhyun’s stomach as he lands on Despina. Despina, with its erratic orbit and slow tumble toward its mother, Neptune. Baekhyun’s feet feel unsteady as he steps waywards toward the building in which Jessica has been said to take shelter._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun thinks of Krystal, Jessica’s wayward bounty hunting sister, in a different troup, hearing the news of her eventual demise._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun’s hand feels heavy on his gun, the silence of the artificial atmosphere eerie. Usually, _NOV-A-GATION®_ was meant to breed life, to keep the constant cycle of every ecosystem thriving and alive. _ _ _ _

____Despina lays as a barren wasteland. It attracts what no man’s land usually did, touch and go rest stops, demolished or run down from natural time. Despina kept a reputation for a good hideout, usually one that kept itself shrouded in a cloudy reputation due to its chaotic inward spiraling orbit._ _ _ _

____Jessica is eating instant ramen, a gun laid out on the bed._ _ _ _

____She only looks up as Baekhyun enters the room from the bathroom, swallowing down the chicken flavored noodles with a satisfied gulp._ _ _ _

____“How did I know you’d take this mission, Byun?”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun’s eyebrow quirk. His hand tightens around the base of his gun._ _ _ _

____“What are you talking about?”_ _ _ _

____Jessica is older than Baekhyun. He can remember the blinking, 27 on her profile, the 28 in parentheses to emphasize her Korean age. It was like it was saying, _Don’t forget where she came from._ _ _ _ _

____Her movements are sleek. She’s wearing wedges, which makes Baekhyun more confused. Is she prepared to die?_ _ _ _

____Jessica’s hand swipes down for the gun on the bed, smiling as she aims it at Baekhyun. “Kill Happy Byun Baekhyun.”_ _ _ _

____It’s a nickname Baekhyun earned, rather than bestowed upon himself._ _ _ _

____All he hears next is the safety going off and a loss of a 1.2 million kill bank._ _ _ _

________

*

____Baekhyun burns the house down. He burns the rickety wood and scratched metal until it’s nothing but ash at his feet. He can smell it, the way it curls up in his lungs, exhaling._ _ _ _

____Luhan was the “kill happy” hunter on Orange Mandarin, despite Yixing having the highest kill count. Luhan always had this smile, Baekhyun could remember, with his glittering eyes that made it seem like sakura petals would begin to fall at his feet. Yixing said Luhan was blood thirsty, that if he could come back as a mythical creature, he’d be a vampire._ _ _ _

____(“And you?” Baekhyun asked, when his hair was a frazzled mess of dead blond hair._ _ _ _

____Yixing hummed, for a bit, cheek dimpling. “Probably a mermaid. I wouldn’t have had to leave home, then.”)_ _ _ _

________

*

____Word travels fast._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon, in his agitated worry, calls Baekhyun._ _ _ _

____“Are you okay?” He asks, bypassing the usual, _Hello? How are you? Have you been eating?_ _ _ _ _

____Baekhyun has set the flyer on autopilot, keyed in coordinates for home on the side panel._ _ _ _

____“I’m fine.”_ _ _ _

____Junmyeon’s breath is heavy over the line, like he was running a marathon and decided to call his favorite son, just to check up on him. Baekhyun can picture him, thick fingers tugging at the blond ends of his hair, lips popping in and out, a nervous habit just like the flat plane his chin turned into when he was embarrassed._ _ _ _

____“Baekhyun,” Junmyeon says. “I don’t want you to turn into what you were when Yixing--”_ _ _ _

____“I’m fine,” Baekhyun repeats._ _ _ _

____“Fine,” Junmyeon says, although it sounds more like, _What can I do for you, anymore?_ “Come home, safely. Please.”_ _ _ _

________

*

____Baekhyun comes home safely._ _ _ _

____He can hear Chanyeol’s voice in his head._ _ _ _

____(“Do you remember what happened to Orange Mandarin?” Baekhyun asks, when he’s feeling brave._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol hums. There’s a staccato beat passing back and forth the radio waves, tap tap tap. Baekhyun can imagine the wide pads of Chanyeol’s fingers hitting the metal dashboard without a purpose._ _ _ _

____“Of course,” Chanyeol answers. “Yi Fan jumped ship, literally. Luhan and Zitao went back to the China bounty unit, Yixing left the galaxy.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun’s heart pangs from the name alone. He feels small, he feels foolish. He ends the call.)_ _ _ _

____Minseok and Jongdae are home for the next two weeks, going back and forth through deep web bartering and helping Junmyeon compile a monthly items list. Whatever is in excess gets shipped off throughout the galaxy, to whoever ends up being the highest bidder._ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo is leaning against the kitchen wall when Baekhyun steps inside. His glasses tucked into the collar of his shirt, eyes bright and wider without the thick rimmed black glasses blocking his view._ _ _ _

____“Mm,” Kyungsoo mumbles in greeting, mouth full of food. “Jongdae and I made kimchi rice.”_ _ _ _

____“Nice,” Baekhyun answers, grabbing a chipped bowl from a familial set Minseok found on Earth._ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo is a comfort for Baekhyun in his own ways. He doesn’t pick and prod, like a constant fingernail digging at a scab, just to get through to the scar. He’s simple in his exterior, which Baekhyun feels easy about as he spoons the rice into his mouth. It’s cold, but Baekhyun can’t expect small miracles anymore._ _ _ _

____There’s only the sound of metal scraping against ceramic and plastic. Baekhyun licking the tip of his spoon clean after every bite._ _ _ _

____“You’re thinning out, again,” Kyungsoo says, going for the pot on the stove. South Korea made sure to make the basic skeleton of their ships hold the simplest necessities for survival. He spoons out the rest of the rice in a small container, made of shining metal that kept the temperature cool._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun spoons more rice into his mouth. “Killing people doesn’t really let me have a three meal a day plan.”_ _ _ _

____“ _Ha ha_ ,” Kyungsoo answers, lips turning into a firm line. “Junmyeon--”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun cuts him off. “I’m tired, Kyungsoo. I don’t want to hear about Junmyeon or my dietary habits, okay?”_ _ _ _

____“Fine.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun watches as Kyungsoo washes his hands, fingers slotted in between each other to rinse out the soap. Every time Kyungsoo washes his hands, the water is a touch too hot and he waits the doctor approved time to clean his hands. It’s as if he’s about to perform a heart transplant surgery rather than going back to working on old flyers._ _ _ _

____“Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun starts. His fingers slide down the long, slender silver handle of the spoon, looking at the rice. “What would you have done if we were still living on Earth?”_ _ _ _

____There’s a stretch of silence. Baekhyun’s mouthful of rice still sitting in his mouth, going soft._ _ _ _

____There’s a lovebite on the back of Kyungsoo’s neck, hidden in the soft curvature of shoulder and neck. There’s a pale blue vein that runs down, stark and jagged like a lightning bolt. Baekhyun can see why Junmyeon would nest his affections there, but it makes him want to reach out and touch for himself._ _ _ _

____He’s never known how to keep his hands to himself._ _ _ _

____“I don’t know,” Kyungsoo answers, like he’s finally settled on the most diplomatic answer. “Sometimes I forget that the Earth existed, at all.”_ _ _ _

____“I know,” Baekhyun agrees. The lovebites stretches and distorts when Kyungsoo gets on the tips of his toes to place the bowl back in its place. “It’s weird. Chanyeol asked me what I wanted to do and I just thought of how I can’t remember anything.”_ _ _ _

____“Chanyeol?” Kyungsoo asks. He turns around, his expression neutral. Maybe a lawyer, then. A diplomat? Baekhyun could imagine him stiffly bowing and conducting politics like a game of chess. “The underground reporter? You’re in contact with him?”_ _ _ _

____Contact is a word that Baekhyun didn’t associate whatever he had Chanyeol with. Baekhyun honestly couldn’t think of what to call it, but something so platonic as contact wasn’t it, or was it?_ _ _ _

____“Um, sort of,” Baekhyun hedges. His stomach feels too full of rice to continue eating, setting it on the table. His hand grips the back of an aging chair, nails scratching against the back. “We talk. Sometimes.”_ _ _ _

____“Sometimes.”_ _ _ _

____“Yes,” Baekhyun admits, feeling a blush cover his cheeks. He killed people for a living, and he could barely talk about Chanyeol without wishing he was swirling down a blackhole. “That’s not the point. You’re diverting.”_ _ _ _

____“No,” Kyungsoo argues, quietly. “Simply confirming something.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun forgot how talking to Kyungsoo was like pulling a tooth. His hand loosens against the chair._ _ _ _

____“We don’t talk about our jobs that much, really.”_ _ _ _

____“Okay.” Kyungsoo is hovering near the edge of the doorless entrance, like he’s ready for the discussion to be over. “Baekhyun, you know that Junmyeon and I--”_ _ _ _

____“Please,” Baekhyun snorts. “It’s not a revenge ploy. You’re better for Junmyeon than I ever would be.”_ _ _ _

____“--Are worried about you,” Kyungsoo finishes, lamely. “Thank you for the approval.”_ _ _ _

____“No problem,” Baekhyun responds easily, huffing out a laugh._ _ _ _

____Everyone is worried about him._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun understands. The universe is the cruelest lover in its own right and Baekhyun sleeps in its lap, every night._ _ _ _

____“I think I would’ve been a teacher,” Kyungsoo answers before leaving the room._ _ _ _

________

*

____Baekhyun misses the seasons._ _ _ _

____He remembers the matching raincoats his mother got for his brother and himself, but the grasp he can’t place. Every time he tries to remember their faces, they come with features that don’t belong to them. He knows it. He can see Junmyeon’s mouth on his brother’s face, or Xiumin’s eyes instead of his mother’s._ _ _ _

____The weather used to be warm, where he wore patterned shorts that his mother hemmed. He can remember his _helmoni_ showing him small crabs, her fingers aged and her skin smelling of sea salt. He can remember it, and that’s it._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol is the one to ask, calmly, when they meet face to face in the pathway of Europa._ _ _ _

____“Do you ever think about me?”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun is a bit shocked by the question, but schools his features. He knows better than to show fear in any situation, especially one that normally wouldn’t call for it. It’s a bit disarming to see someone as tall as Chanyeol ask such a vulnerable question._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun swallows, the slim collar around his throat bobbing slightly. “Yes.”_ _ _ _

____He avoids Chanyeol’s eyes, looking instead at the TV station playing the 24 hour news, constantly rotating pre recorded stories. Jessica’s face gleams on the screen, and all he can think of is, _More than I’d like to admit.__ _ _ _

____Chanyeol, in person, is not as embracing as the vocal persona commands over the radio waves. He is a bit clumsy in his movements. He crowds Baekhyun into the corner of the elevator, as if he’s hiding him from someone. Baekhyun doesn’t mind, instead letting his nose tuck into the sharpened dip of Chanyeol’s collarbone, taking in the scent of man-made perfume and sweat._ _ _ _

____In the hotel room is when Chanyeol decides enough is enough._ _ _ _

____“Did they hurt you?” He asks, suddenly looming over Baekhyun, cutting his vision from the television screen._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun quirks a brow, arms crossed over his chest as they have been for minutes. “Who?”_ _ _ _

____“Whoever did this to you,” Chanyeol answers. His breath is warm, leaning in closer, like he’s about to lick out the key to whatever he’s trying to find in Baekhyun._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun feels anger buzz around his temples, slow and lax._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol feels the change, moving back slightly. His movements are hurried. He checks his watch, pats his pockets, fixes his hair. They don’t have all day to talk about their lives, they can’t. Chanyeol’s broadcasts starts soon, and he has a card with a few drops of a shadies blood inserted to put up for auction._ _ _ _

____“Did what?” Baekhyun asks, looking at the spot next to Chanyeol’s head. Before, he would’ve met the inquisition head on, bullseye, nothing but the unblinking eye meeting him._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol waves his hands around, to simply means _this, whatever it is_. _ _ _ _

____“Spit it out, Chanyeol.”_ _ _ _

____“Broke your heart,” Chanyeol fumbles. His hand, outstretched as if to catch the words and bundle them back into his mouth, closes into a loose fist. “Um.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun looks out the window, then, through the flimsy, age worn blinds. There’s no weather, out in the cold darkness, but there’s artificial warmth. Rest stops and no man’s land usually don’t have environment changing navigation, like the planets and Luna do. All he sees is immovable darkness._ _ _ _

____“Yixing,” He says, thinking better of it. How long could he keep running from the truth? That Yixing took a lighter to Baekhyun, like Baekhyun had done to the flimsy house where Jessica died, to the man who hooked a knife into Baekhyun’s arm. “That was his name.”_ _ _ _

____“Zhang Yixing?” Chanyeol asks, movements stuttering, as if he were glitching. His hair looks soft, where the light bends to its natural contour, the slight waving shape of a straightening job losing its edge. He sits down as if he suddenly notes Baekhyun’s tense posture._ _ _ _

____Relaxing, all Baekhyun answers with is a simple: “Yes.”_ _ _ _

____“Hard to love someone with a kill count that high,” Chanyeol says. He wears the same watch, Baekhyun notes, which he realizes, through countless conversations, has been Chanyeol’s first gift to himself. Why a watch? Baekhyun wonders. No one can rely on time in the dead carcass of space._ _ _ _

____“Well, he didn’t kill me, did he?” Baekhyun fights back, suddenly thinking of Yixing’s hands all over his body. He thinks of Yixing’s hands at the base of his throat, reliable. It warms under the band of simple leather lying over Baekhyun’s neck, the drumming of his pulse drowning out every other sound._ _ _ _

____Yixing had an incredible laugh. It didn’t remind him of a kille. It reminded him of the Yixing he loved, tender and--_ _ _ _

____Gone._ _ _ _

____“Hm.”_ _ _ _

____“Hm?”_ _ _ _

____Chanyeol’s brows perk, mouth opening a bit slack. “What? Oh, yeah, _hm_.”_ _ _ _

____“What’s it supposed to mean? Your _hm_ ,” Baekhyun presses. He’s never been good at those noises, the noises that come out of Junmyeon and Kyungsoo on a daily basis. It’s their main means of communication. Baekhyun hates it. _ _ _ _

____Chanyeol’s hands are big, fingers spread wide over the cheap wooden table top in the motel room. There’s a small puckered crimson blot on Chanyeol’s finger for means of payment to this motel room._ _ _ _

____“It’s just that, Baekhyun. _Hm_.”_ _ _ _

____Before this, on Earth, if Baekhyun grew up the way he did now, he wouldn’t have asked. He would slither his way into Chanyeol’s lap, hands in his semi-damaged hair, the ends clinging to the perfume he had sprayed on his wrist, dabbing along the edges of his neck. Baekhyun would inhale the scent, laughing, saying, Chanyeol, in that voice of his, and it would be over, forgotten._ _ _ _

____This isn’t Earth. Baekhyun’s arm throbs in the cold of space, a painful searing reminder of where he is, who he is._ _ _ _

____He looks at Chanyeol._ _ _ _

____Looks at the wall._ _ _ _

____Back at him._ _ _ _

____“I loved him,” Baekhyun says, instead. “He’s gone, but I still hoped, for whatever reason, that he’d come back and realize that he belonged here. With me.”_ _ _ _

____Chanyeol doesn’t answer, doesn’t say _hm_ , again, like he’d ever contemplate what it means. They all have someone they’re aching for, to come back from parallel universes, through wormholes, from distant galaxies to say, _I was meant to be here with you.__ _ _ _

____It happens in a flurry of movement, blurred lines caught in an animation loop. Chanyeol crowding around him, Chanyeol on every part of his being, in the quiet rest stop that blinks a neon red _Vacancy_ , illuminating lukewarm heat. _ _ _ _

____Baekhyun can’t breathe. His lungs feel heavy, too small. His hands clumsy. Deimos brought him to this, this landing point and he doesn’t know where to go. He can think about it later. His hands crawl up Chanyeol’s back, wide and commanding in a way Chanyeol isn’t._ _ _ _

____Yixing’s fingers were slender, mechanical and all knowing in removing Baekhyun’s clothing. Chanyeol’s are thicker, palms wider, not as clever with tricks that can make Baekhyun’s kneecaps buzz and stomach coil. Chanyeol’s teeth are sharp, canines pressed over Baekhyun’s pulse point._ _ _ _

____He can’t breathe._ _ _ _

____It has been _so, so long_. Baekhyun can barely remember what his naked body looks like, with its scars and skin stretched taut, slightly tanned and rosy. His jacket is tossed across the floor, the zipper clacking against carpeted floor. His shirt is tucked up. In a brave moment, Chanyeol ducks down, kisses Baekhyun’s chest, edging his lips over a dusty pink nipple._ _ _ _

____The gasp is quiet, the silence deafening. Baekhyun wishes his brain would shut off. He thinks of Kyungsoo’s lovebite, throbbing over the vein. In the next moment, he’s thinking of Yixing smiling, looming over him, saying, _It’s better if I go, Baekhyunnie, I have to go…__ _ _ _

____He wants to forget. His hands are scarred, an array of small cuts blending skin into patchwork colors. He tugs Chanyeol’s head up, says, “Just kiss me,” swallowing down the _please_ lodged in his own throat. He feels small, in the oppressive heat that Chanyeol carries, as if he swallowed a raging flame that roars in his blood, in his skin, in his veins._ _ _ _

____“Baekhyun,” Chanyeol gasps, with his hands a blur of movement, of sound. His voice is deeper, ragged._ _ _ _

____He sounds like he’s about to die._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun doesn’t want to be the one standing over Chanyeol, blood on his hands. Desperately, Baekhyun grabs back._ _ _ _

____He can’t speak. There are so many things he wants to say, but all he does is remove Chanyeol’s coat, a heavy black bomber jacket with miscellaneous patches stitched into the thread. All he can think of is his fingers tripping over Chanyeol’s stomach when they fall onto the bed, springs squeaking in protest._ _ _ _

____“Did you do this when you were fifteen?” Baekhyun asks, grinding his hips down as Chanyeol’s shirt finds its way onto the floor._ _ _ _

____There’s a laugh, caught in the space between their bodies. It’s damp against Baekhyun’s throat, Adam’s apple bobbing, shoulders hunching instinctively. Chanyeol’s hands smooth down his back, fingertips brushing against each prominent knob._ _ _ _

____“Do you really want to?” Chanyeol asks, eyes wide._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun nods, hands threading through Chanyeol’s hair, fading gray, black roots exposing themselves from the overgrown length._ _ _ _

____“Yeah,” he breathes. “Wait, did you bring stuff with you?”_ _ _ _

____Blushing, Chanyeol nods. “I just wanted to be prepared. It’s not like we can go to the corner mart for lube and condoms, right?”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun laughs, head tilting, says, “That’s oddly sweet,” and then, “Where is it?”_ _ _ _

____“In the jacket. Zipped up pocket.”_ _ _ _

____There are a few packets of lube, a string of condoms. Baekhyun takes off his pants, underwear sliding off just as easily._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol looks at him as if he’s never seen anything like him._ _ _ _

____The scars are mottled, ribbon pink flesh contouring Baekhyun’s muscles. He feels like covering up, under Chanyeol’s gaze._ _ _ _

____“You’re so--”_ _ _ _

____“Beat up?”_ _ _ _

____“--Pretty.”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun’s hands clutch around the items in his hand. “Oh,” he says._ _ _ _

____“Okay.”_ _ _ _

____Chanyeol is easy, agreeable, an excited dog who wants nothing more than to please. Baekhyun drops the packets and condoms on the bed, letting his hands slide up the long stretch of Chanyeol’s legs. They’re firm, muscular, bowed slightly, Baekhyun’s fingers trekking their way up, up, up and--_ _ _ _

____“ _Oh_ ,” Chanyeol gasps, when Baekhyun’s palm cups his cock, covered by the flimsy material of his briefs. _ _ _ _

____“Do you want to--” Baekhyun starts to asks. He should’ve asked in the beginning, but his hand slowly treks down the other leg, fingernail running a circle around Chanyeol’s kneecap, a plum bruise near the center. He avoids it._ _ _ _

____“Yes,” Chanyeol answers, serious. It’s like the first night, all bravado, with his rings and turtleneck that turned his neck red when the material caught his skin. “I want you, Baekhyun.”_ _ _ _

____He hadn’t heard that in so long. Longer than he thought, his body aching as if waking up from a slumber he didn’t know it took. His cheeks warm at the admission._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun doesn’t respond, instead sitting back on his heels, taking Chanyeol’s flimsy boxers off as his hands slide down the contour of Chanyeol’s legs, the drag deliberately slow. Chanyeol’s body tenses, as if the simple act will make him come. It’s flattering._ _ _ _

____“Relax,” Baekhyun says, throwing the briefs off the bed. He moves, smooth, despite the nerves humming in the back of his neck. “I haven’t done this in a while.”_ _ _ _

____“Neither have I,” Chanyeol admits. He breathes, his body relaxing._ _ _ _

____“I’ll go slow,” Baekhyun replies. His mouth is warmth, Chanyeol’s cock heavy when his mouth wraps around it. He suckles at the head, letting his tongue get used to the taste, to the size, to the heaviness. His jaw aches slightly, taking Chanyeol deeper, slow, slow, slow._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol’s fingers, thick and sure, find their way into Baekhyun’s hair and twist. It’s a reassurance as much as an order._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun can’t take Chanyeol all the way, too much of him in his mouth. His hand wraps around the skin he can’t cover., the other spreading itself out on Chanyeol’s thigh, letting the fingers spread over the skin. He’s so warm._ _ _ _

____All Baekhyun can hear is Chanyeol’s breathing, the distant sound of a TV next door, commenting on the storms in Jupiter. His eyes flutter shut, as he pulls off slightly to press a kiss to the head of Chanyeol’s cock, fingers marveling at the shape. Gently, his thumbnails runs over the vein and Chanyeol’s knees draw up, a moan escaping his mouth._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol is the one who tugs at Baekhyun’s hair. He’s fully erect._ _ _ _

____“I want to--”_ _ _ _

____“Yeah,” Baekhyun agrees, switching positions._ _ _ _

____Chanyeol, kneeling with his cock curved against his stomach, nearing the dip of his navel, is breathtaking. Baekhyun isn’t the type to be awed. His fingers grasp the pillow, nodding when Chanyeol reminds him that it’ll be cold, bending down to kiss the inside of his knee as he circles around Baekhyun’s hole._ _ _ _

____He has to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The sound of the TV falls away, the pillow warming under his hands as he relaxes, his toes uncurling from their tense position. Chanyeol breathes a sigh of relief, but Baekhyun can’t open his eyes._ _ _ _

____“Good, good, good,” Chanyeol repeats, a mantra as his mouth finds the soft, sensitive skin of Baekhyun’s thighs. His fingers stretch, burn at the base of Baekhyun’s back, flashes of white and then a nothing black that dulls into latent pleasure. “Good, good, good.”_ _ _ _

____Chanyeol’s fingers withdraw, Baekhyun doesn’t realize it, lost on Chanyeol alone. His chest feels too tight, his back arched, begging. Grabbing the pillow under his head, he covers his face in act of defense. He refuses to show his vulnerability, letting Chanyeol instead take the picture of his body only._ _ _ _

____“Are you--?”_ _ _ _

____“Yes,” Baekhyun breathes. “Yes, please, just--”_ _ _ _

____Chanyeol is everywhere at once. His hands spreading Baekhyun’s thighs apart, his mouth pressing tender kisses to Baekhyun’s stomach as if it is their wedding night. Baekhyun’s nails sink into the pillow, his mouth opened in a gasp._ _ _ _

____He’s big, wide and splitting Baekhyun open. Everywhere there’s heat, everywhere there’s Chanyeol murmuring, _ _good, good, good, my pretty Baekhyun--___ _ _ _

____And all Baekhyun can think of is how good he is. How he deserves to let himself be sat in Chanyeol’s lap, moans and gasps and a hiccup of pleasure when Chanyeol comes, a warm but secure hand around his own cock and he’s following close behind._ _ _ _

______Good, good, good.__ _ _ _ _

________

*

____Chanyeol leaves Baekhyun with a soft kiss._ _ _ _

____“See you later, Space Cowboy,” he says, in that charming, encompassing voice of his._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun feels a rush wash through his chest, as if he’s floating. It reminds him of his dreams, where he’s floating in nothing but black and his mother is calling out for him, hand reaching._ _ _ _

_____CatEye_ is wearing thin. Baekhyun can tell, despite Kyungsoo’s best efforts, that she’ll have to eventually be put down and given up for parts. There’d be nothing but bones left, all the meat sold off to better builders who can make rust into metal again._ _ _ _

____It’s nearing June, already. Baekhyun has seen the calendar, a diagonal line crossed through the days diligently. Kyungsoo likes to keep his time, almost as much as he likes Shin Raymun, speaking in nothing but soft grunts and a mechanical nod of his head._ _ _ _

____June usually means the census. Despite EXO’s best effort to remain an outside bounty group, Junmyeon’s connection and faithfulness to his country has kept a loose end connected from one side to the other._ _ _ _

____That loose end being Kyungsoo._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun doesn’t know the whole story. Despite being one of the original founders of EXO and its bounty line, Kyungsoo came as a mission statement from the South Korean bureau. Government officials were steadily supplying the criminal reports, some buried deep in encrypted files that hackers like Chanyeol were employed to decode and report. Bounty 24/7 being the legal station that has contracts and handshakes, but Chanyeol’s station brought in the bounties that made serious cash._ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo, though, is a different case altogether._ _ _ _

____It’s never been spoken about in detail. Only Junmyeon knows the case file, front to back._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun knows Kyungsoo had been given over for military duties during his childhood. A necessary prototype in a long line of Korean children deemed “above average.” South Korea wasn’t the only one who employed bases to teach headhunting, but they were the one to come with a controversy large enough to cut the program out, like a bruise that never fades._ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo has sanctuary on EXO, taking up mechanics in a fight to keep the ghosts at bay just as much as the police. Stepping one foot out of the EXO borders means an instant arrest and an instant death. Baekhyun has gathered enough of this when he snuck through the folder himself, but kept the information to himself._ _ _ _

____There’s one opportunity for Kyungsoo to leave the ship, which is where Baekhyun is leading _CatEye_. _ _ _ _

____“Hi,” Junmyeon says when Baekhyun has _CatEye_ in the landing deck. He’s in his best clothes, best meaning the clothes he would be seen in if he were with his family at an event. They look so starched that if Junmyeon tries to bend, the clothes would crack._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun nods. “Hey. You seem nervous.”_ _ _ _

____Junmyeon levels him with a look._ _ _ _

____“Sorry,” Baekhyun says, eyes flickering down. Junmyeon’s gaze can be intimidating when it needs to be. “I just thought you’d like some humor.”_ _ _ _

____“I feel like I’m going to vomit.”_ _ _ _

____It’s Baekhyun’s turn to roll his eyes. “We’re bringing him to draw blood so they can make sure he’s safe and can be included in the census, Junmyeon. You’re not marrying him.”_ _ _ _

____He looks at Junmyeon’s clothes again._ _ _ _

____“You’re _not_ , right?”_ _ _ _

____“No, you idiot,” Junmyeon retorts. His shoulders slumps some._ _ _ _

____Everywhere, Baekhyun can feel the bruising lovebites. He can calculate and mark specific parts on his body, on his skin. He tugs at the sleeves of his shirt, mindlessly._ _ _ _

____It’s more of a ritual than anything. Baekhyun doesn’t have to go, but Kyungsoo and Junmyeon have mentioned that it isn’t the same. Maybe it’s because Baekhyun can soothe the ache out of Kyungsoo’s wrists when they were not cuffed at the Luna embassy._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon decides on taking his ship, an older flyer, barely used, named _Carnation_ for reasons Baekhyun doesn’t know. It runs fairly well despite its age._ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo’s feet slide back and forth, looking out the window as Sehun and Jongin wave them off._ _ _ _

____“I can’t believe those two are still alive,” Kyungsoo mutters._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun laughs._ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo turns his head slightly, the edges of his lush lips pulling up at the corners. Baekhyun can understand why Junmyeon likes him._ _ _ _

____Jongin and Sehun brought in the ranking of earnings to have them live semi-comfortably. The majority of the government, whether involved in the bounty operations or not, still saw hunters as something less than. They deserve semi-comfortable at best._ _ _ _

____“It’ll be okay,” Baekhyun assures._ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo hums. “You’re not usually like this. Did you see Chanyeol?”_ _ _ _

____Baekhyun, for as much as he knows and explores about people, seems to always be swiped at the knees by Kyungsoo._ _ _ _

____Junmyeon is too busy navigating Carnation through to get to Luna. The trip will take two days, at best._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun eases the cuffs off of Kyungsoo, letting his thumb swipe over the skin. There is nothing to worry about, barely a red line of irritation. It helps Kyungsoo calm down as much as it calms Baekhyun down._ _ _ _

____“I may have,” Baekhyun answers._ _ _ _

____“Slacking on the job?” Kyungsoo asks._ _ _ _

____Kyungsoo’s heart thrums underneath the criss cross river of veins packed under his paling skin. Baekhyun presses, gently, against the source of the beating and feels Kyungsoo’s hand tremor at the automatic pressure._ _ _ _

____“When have I ever slacked off on the job?” Baekhyun teases._ _ _ _

____“Every day,” Junmyeon jokes._ _ _ _

________

*

____Kyungsoo’s blood is taken in increments. His arm flexing, fingers tensing._ _ _ _

____Baekhyun leaves the room after the first series of tests. His own arm aches. The flurry of people around him makes him feel like he’s suffocating. He doesn’t remember the last time he saw these many people in one place._ _ _ _

____He half expects to run into Yixing. He expects to see him standing there, slim with his bedroom eyes and dimpling cheeks. Instead, he steps into a thinning out lobby, waiting for the tests to finish._ _ _ _

____In some vain hope, Baekhyun reaches for his phone, the screen cracked, sending the background picture in fragmented, broken junction of pieces._ _ _ _

____“Chanyeol-ah,” Baekhyun calls, feeling his heart press firm, warm. “Hi.”_ _ _ _

____“Hi, Space Cowboy,” Chanyeol greets just as warm as Baekhyun’s chest feels. “Miss me, already?”_ _ _ _

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to anyone who read this. i appreciate it. this journey has been a bit long, but worth it. thank you to sadie and meaghan for helping me write this. all remaining mistakes are my own.  
> if you would like a song to listen to/think of with this fic, majority of the inspiration came from "which witch (demo)" by florence + the machine.
> 
> hope to see you next time.
> 
>  
> 
> [twitter.](https://twitter.com/honeymyeons)


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